Dr. Leonard Sax writes a timely book about boys and how to help them thrive.
Young women across our nation are asking the same question many parents and older generations are asking: Where have all the men gone? There are still plenty of quality men around; however, it’s obvious from a survey of our surroundings that something is amiss. The science bears out what we all see, there is a problem with many boys and large numbers of men. But what is the problem?
Malaise, according to Dr. Leonard Sax, has gone mainstream. Boys suffer from a lack of passion and motivation, which is causing boys and young men to underperform. But, what if there were a magic pill you could give your sons to make sure they grew up to be productive, motivated family men and citizens? According to Dr. Sax, his method is like an elixir for boys. Dr. Sax outlines his findings in his latest book, Boys Adrift: Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men.
What is the Problem?
The reasons for this epidemic level malaise are fivefold. First, current teaching methods are not conducive to boys. Second, the rise of video games is damaging boys and young men. Third, ADHD medication does not solve problems, but might cause more problems. Fourth, environmental toxins like plastics are endocrine disruptors, triggering hormone imbalances. And lastly, masculinity has been systematically devalued.
Like other books, Boys Adrift enumerates the issues: sperm counts are declining, boys’ bones are more brittle today than 30 years ago, and the mental health of boys is at an all-time low. In 1970 nearly 58% of college students were male, and now it’s 39%. Boys simply don’t like school anymore, but why? As Dr. Sax observes, “What’s troubling about so many of the boys I see in the office, or the boys I hear about from parents and teachers, is that they don’t have much passion for any real-world activity.”
The primary issue addressed in Boys Adrift is one as old as time: If men and boys are not engaging in productive activities, they will find destructive ones. Let’s review each of Dr. Sax’s factors and see what prescription he has for how to help boys grow up to be the productive men God intended.
Changing Schools
Boys, based on Dr. Sax’s assessment, are simply sent to school too early. This is not problematic for girls because their brains develop earlier, but it’s a death nail for boys. Not so long ago, and in other counties, children didn’t start school until the age of 7 – essentially first grade. Now, however, not only are we asking our boys to start school before their brains are mature enough to handle it, but the pace of school is accelerating. “The gift of a year,” is what more affluent families do to help their boys succeed at school and consequently boys in affluent neighborhoods learn to like school and achieve academically, while boys in poorer areas suffer in school and never catch up.
Dr. Sax identifies a number of change in schools that cause problems for boys. The first is an acceleration in the curriculum. The second, is a shift away from real world, experience-based learning. And lastly, interacting, competition, and roughhousing is discouraged and emotion is encouraged – but boys don’t learn this way. As Dr. Sax illuminates, large schools can only accommodate top athletes, but all boys need to compete to learn. Team sports, competition, real world experience, hands on activities, and risk taking are just some of the ways boys are energized by learning.
Forcing boys to attend a girl centric school too early and then sending him to a large school where he is lost in the crowd, is the perfect way to disengage a boy for life.
Video Games
The negatives of “gaming” abound: Video games are addictive, give rise to attention deficit, urge destructiveness, and encourage unhealthy risk taking. Boys who obsess over video games are more like to be obese, emotionally unhealthy, and unconnected from the world. Gaming also distorts reality, which leads to dehumanizing behavior and boys developing weird social behaviors. In short, let’s ditch the video games.
There is good news, according to Dr. Sax. Parents control the games. His advice is to control and limit video games as early as possible. His better advice, which hold true for most things, is this: Don’t do what the neighbors are doing. You are in charge of your children, act like it. Don’t rely on the neighbors to set the trends or be pressured by fifth graders.
Instead of video games, encourage kids to play outside or participate in sports or activities like fishing. The author contends past generations spent time developing useful skills such as patience, delayed gratification, and hard work. Engaging with other people, for instance, is vital to success – the handshake remains the standard measuring stick for trustworthiness. Almost every business owner, our law firm included, will tell you the best referrals come from clients and friends. It’s hard to develop the personal skills to operate a business if you spent your youth gaming.
Medications for ADHD
What would the world be like if General Patton, Theodore Roosevelt, and Ben Franklin had been medicated? High energy boys like Tom Sawyer in our country are medicated at alarming rates so they will sit down and be quite. This nation of ours used to inspire adventurers, outdoorsmen, and inventors. They created our government and economy, which are the envy of the world. They established national parks and modern medicine, but now we have turned our backs on them. Now, if you have a wild idea, your mind and soul must be dulled with harmful drugs so you’ll fall in line. Sadly, Dr. Sax’s research suggest parents and teachers would rather commit to the tale that there is something wrong with the child’s brain than to suggest parenting or school changes.
Why has this happened? How did we get to a place where we medicate boys with high potential so they just stay out of the way? Two reasons, according to Dr. Sax: “One factor is our cultural shift away from individual responsibility and toward third-party explanations.” That is a nice way of saying we are addicted to victimhood – and yes, it’s easier to be a victim than a hero. The second reason is the inappropriate acceleration of early elementary curriculum.
What the doctors prescribing Adderall and Ritalin and other medication don’t tell the parents is that the drugs cause major personality changes. These drugs lead to laziness and disengaged boys. It’s not just Dr. Sax, but, many experts such as John Gray and Warren Farrell contend ADHD medication can cause permanent brain damage. The drugs caused damage to the nucleus accumbens in the brain which has dopamine receptors.
The theory is these drugs interrupt the proper function and development of the nucleus accumbens. The nucleus accumbens is the motivation center of the brain, the part of the brain that translates motivation into action. If the motivation center in permanently damaged, then these boys will grow up to be useless adults. Other experts on this subject are even more to the point, proffering evidence that ADHD medications can cause boys to lose several inches on their height and stunt their intellectual development.
Dr. Sax argues there are better alternatives than medicating our boys. Find the correct school (perhaps an all-boys school), get them engaged in sports, and ditch the video games.
Plastics Causes Harm
Male fish in the Potomac River are growing eggs. Male alligators in Florida have shriveled testicles and female hormones. Girls are starting puberty sooner and boys later. These are just some examples of what happens when endocrine disruptors enter the water supply. Endocrine disruptors are substances, often found in plastic, that mimic the actions of hormones, specifically female hormones. According to the author, plastics contain phthalates, which could have all kinds of devastating effects.
Cheap plastic leaches into water, which places phthalates in our system. These phthalates are endocrine disruptors, among other things, which interrupt the natural function of the body. It’s generally accepted that BPA exposure from flimsy plastics in infancy and childhood can disrupt and distort development in both girls and boys. This is why virtually everyone knows not to drink a partially melted water bottle that has been sitting in a hot car. But how many people consider pacifiers and plastic milk bottles as potential pollutants to our babies?
How do plastics containing phthalates affect humans? Dr. Sax believes these contaminants are causing erectile dysfunction and impotency in young men, among various other negative health consequences. He believes these substances are triggering puberty earlier in girls and later in boys. Consequently, girls as young at 8 years old can go through puberty and boys are experience puberty later. It’s not just puberty, Dr. Sax’s studies show these substances may be causing wide ranging problems from obesity to abnormal sex organs. He also contends, these endocrine disruptors from plastic might disrupt the same motivation function as the ADHD medications, the nucleus accumbens.
Becoming a Man
Dr. Sax’s final point is that for a boy to become a man, he must see a man. This is a growing refrain from many voices. We must teach boys how to grow up to be men, it doesn’t just happen. Fatherlessness, thus, is the most devastating shockwave pulsating through our communities.
As Dr. Sax astutely observes, different communities imbue young men with the virtues of manhood in different ways, but one universal is that dads and a wider community of men must raise boys to be gentlemen. Men must show boys how to be courteous, kind, unselfish, and how to assume responsibility for their communities. How is a boy supposed to learn how to work if he is not taught the virtue of hard work? How is a boy going to learn self-control if he’s not shown it? The idea of self-control, like air or water, is essential and does not show up very well on the pages of a book or computer screen. How will a boy grow out of his natural narcissistic state and turn that self-interest into positive action for his family and community?
Being a man means using your strength in the service of others – Jesus did it, so did millions of men fighting to save Europe during World War II. Video games do not teach how to be a man, and moms can’t do it. Our society must collectively invite men and dads to once again play a role in the development boys – and to show our girls the types of men they should marry.
End Result and Detox
What happens to our homes and communities if our schools keep treating boys like they are girls, if we continue dulling the minds of our boys by medicating them, if we let them waste away on video games, if we continue poisoning them with hormone disruptors, and we keep devaluing masculinity?
The results are in: we get lazy men and violent men. Here in 2022 over half the country is not working and we are in the midst of a massive crime wave. Many young men think college is a waste, but they don’t want to do trade work either. Many young men are content living with their parents and reject traditional male responsibilities – breadwinning, protecting the home, working to create something of value, being a husband and father.
How did we get here? Dr. Sax points to many culprits: porn has replaced women, widespread fatherlessness, and feminism has beaten boys down and made them ashamed to be a man. One of the strongest portions of Dr. Sax’s book is a series of letters written to him in which young women ask “where have all the men gone,” and parents ask what can I do, and boys write-in saying why would I make the effort. It’s a sad, but reversable trend.
As a society and as parents, what can we do to resolve some of the issues facing boys? Dr. Sax suggests five steps to remedy the boy problem – and they are relatively easy.
- With regard to education, he suggests restoring physical elements and delaying the academic requirements.
- Ditch video games, but provide alternative hobbies such as sports, hunting, or fishing.
- Do not medicate your son or daughter with ADHD medication
- Avoid hormone and endocrine disruptors like plastics made of PET, BPA, and other petroleum derivatives.
- Engage fathers and find positive male role models.
Boys Adrift is essential reading for all parents, especially boy parents. It’s both useful in spotting the issues, but it also has actionable plans we can all take to help improve the lives of our sons and make our society better. In addition to the beforementioned recommendations, Dr. Sax promotes commonsensical solutions such as all boy schools, cross generational engagement, involved parents, and much more. The book is not perfect, he makes some unforced errors by criticizing other like-minded allies and promoting some odd ideas. He also never explains if a boy who drinks water from a hot plastic bottle each morning to take his ADHD drugs will recover. It would be nice to know if the damage we’re doing through school, ADHD medication, video games, plastics, and emasculating men is permanent. Generally, Boys Adrift is a useful contribution to an ongoing conversation about how to help boys grow into the men we all need them to be.
