Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men

by Leonard Sax

Something scary is happening to boys today. From kindergarten to college, American boys are, on average, less resilient and less ambitious than they were a mere twenty years ago. The gender gap in college attendance and graduation rates has widened dramatically. While Emily is working hard at school and getting A's, her brother Justin is goofing off. He's more concerned about getting to the next level in his videogame than about finishing his homework. Now, Dr. Leonard Sax delves into the scientific literature and draws on more than twenty years of clinical experience to explain why boys and young men are failing in school and disengaged at home. He shows how social, cultural, and biological factors have created an environment that is literally toxic to boys. He also presents practical solutions, sharing strategies which educators have found effective in re-engaging these boys at school, as well as handy tips for parents about everything from homework, to videogames, to medication.

Genres: Parenting, Nonfiction, Education, Psychology, Self Help, Audiobook, Family

288 pages, Paperback

First published February 15, 2005

About the author

Leonard Sax is an American psychologist and family physician. He is the author of Why Gender Matters (Doubleday, 2005; revised edition to be published in 2017); Boys Adrift: the five factors driving the growing epidemic of unmotivated boys and underachieving young men (Basic Books, 2007; revised edition, 2016); Girls on the Edge (Basic Books, 2010); and The Collapse of Parenting (Basic Books, 2015). The Collapse of Parenting became a New York Times bestseller.

Reviews

[Marianneosharp]

So, before I forget all that I've learned I need to share. I read this book after Allison told me she was reading it and have now recommended it STRONGLY to many of my friends. It's a pretty quick read and makes you aware of big issues that every parent of boys should educate themselves on. These are a few of the resolutions I've made after having read this book.

First of all, I will be aware that the public school system is "feminized". Sax, the author, says it would help parents and teachers alike to be more conscious of how to keep boys attention as they learn. I've decided for sure that I want to hold Jack back a year (his b-day's in Aug) so he'll be the oldest rather than the youngest in his grade. This was my original plan but now I feel even more strongly about it. Sax says that what was once 1st grade education is now kindergarten.

Next, I will be more okay with the fact that boys are "wiggly". Okay, that sounds silly but the fact is that many boys are misdiagnosed with ADHD when the reality is that they have energy that needs to find some good outlets. I already have issues with the fact that school is too long and recess is too short....whatever I can do to compensate for that I will do.

Next, I will never microwave plastics. I'm more aware, in every part of our home, of possible "endocrine disruptors". Okay, I admit that this is the sketchy part that you can take too far.....but I really believe that we're surrounded daily by pollutants that can mess up our bodies, and kids are more vulnerable. I think that when they're easy changes like cleaning with natural products (like vinegar) or buying more glass and less plastic, then there's no excuse for me to not be doing it. Sax talks about these different elements that trully are effecting boys and their motivation in life.

Next, and this is the one I think will be hard, I will try to not let my boys become addicted to video games. They haven't got there yet, which I'm grateful for, and I have no idea how I will do this but I'll figure it our when I get there.

There's some parts of the book that left me frustrated. Sax says that all-boy schools are the way to go. Unfortunately, that's not an option here and I'm not motivated enough to start one up. He mentions some fabulous school in which the boys have fabulous male teachers and the boys all end up being.....well......fabulous. That would be great if we could go to that school but I'm not ready to pick up and move to Virginia or wherever the heck it was to give my boys the perfect education. He made some great suggestions about how to better the education for boys but it would take a serious overhall. He didn't mention this but I kept thinking I should just home school my kids so I could dictate the way that everything was taught. Who knows....... (Britt would never go for that....well maybe there's a small chance......the tiniest ever.)

Sax also spoke about the role models boys have in pop culture. That part scares me to death and I'm even more afraid about where it will be in 10 years when they're in High school. He also spoke a bit about how many cultures have a "right of passage" boys go through that makes them a man, no longer a boy. I kept thinking about the mormon "culture" and how a mission can really make a boy a man. He said that using your strength to serve others is the definition of manhood. I loved that part. I'm so grateful my boys have a great dad to look to as a role model.

Anyway, such a good book. This guy has plenty of experience and all the right credentials to be talking about these issues. Here's the website: http://www.boysadrift.com/ This is interesting too:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/... If you read it let me know what yout think!

[Debbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started reading this book after hearing about it from a mom of a teenage boy. Her son is a good kid: good student, practices his faith, athletic, mannerly, but she saw warning signs of how easily good kids can go astray when they don’t have someone to help guide them. If she was concerned about her son, I figured I ought to be concerned about mine, since I have five, and three of them still have many years before they enter the turbulent teens. Best to be prepared.

It didn’t take like before I couldn’t put the book down. Dr. Sax relates stories of real boys, told by real parents, and how they were often intelligent kids, who lacked motivation for school or life outside of video games. I could easily imagine any of my boys, given free reign, could easily turn into video zombies. Girls might spend too much time chatting with their friends on Facebook, but boys like to play action-packed video games until their eyes glaze over and their heads drop to the keyboard from lack of sleep. Neither food, nor school, nor senior prom can propel them from the game machine unless a parental foot on the backside gives them an extra boost.

So it was with a great deal of expectation that I read Dr. Sax’s book on the “growing epidemic of unmotivated boys and underachieving young men.”

I suspect everyone knows at least one (or dozens) of 18 to 30 year-old males who seem to have no motivation for doing much of anything with their lives, but are often content with their low-paying jobs and single status, quite frequently still living at home with Mom and Dad. Before you call me judgmental, look at the statistics: Women now outnumber men on college campuses and in medical and veterinary schools. The number of women entering traditionally male fields, such as engineering and technology, is increasing, while the number of men entering those fields is decreasing. Where are the men going? They’re dropping out of college, or not even entering in the first place.

Dr. Sax lists five reasons for the alarming trend of unmotivated males. No, it’s not all the fault video games, although that is the first reason he lists. The others are: the feminization of education, overuse of prescription medication (for ADHD), endocrine disruptors in the environment, and the devaluation of masculinity.

He makes compelling arguments for each of the five reasons and all parents of boys should educate themselves on these topics. The one I found most interesting, and the one I’d heard nothing about was endocrine disruptors in the environment. These are environmental pollutants caused from a variety of sources, including phthalates found in plastics such as plastic water and soda bottles, pacifiers and baby bottles. These endocrine disruptors have been shown to cause early onset of puberty in girls, while having the opposite effect on boys. According to Dr. Sax, “The overwhelming majority of modern chemicals that mimic the action of human sex hormones, curiously, mimic the action only of female hormones.” They have also been linked with the disruption of brain function in the area of memory and motivation, as well as ADHD, again, affecting girls differently than boys. He also refers to these chemicals as “environmental estrogen,” as they mimic those female hormones. Dr. Sax further gives evidence that the increase in childhood obesity can be directly linked to these environmental estrogens. There are other alarming symptoms as well: male genital abnormalities, lower testosterone levels and male infertility.

Another pollutant in our environment that affects males far more than females is pornography. (See my book review on The ABCs of Choosing a Good Husband). Men no longer need women for sex, just as women no longer need men for babies. As a result, men and women are putting off marriage until much later, or in many cases, forsaking it altogether. Dr. Sax cites the number of men ages thirty-five to forty who have never been married has tripled in the last thirty years. Just twenty-five years ago it was 8%. It currently stands at 22% and is rising rapidly.

Dr. Sax also mentions the rise of contraception as a cause of the divorce of marriage from sex. (Once again, Pope Paul VI was right). Dr. Sax says, “More and more boys are discovering that they prefer a sexy image on a computer screen to a real live woman with expectations…” Some of the physical results of this dependency on pornography are the increasing number of men who need Viagra or Cialis.

And now the good news:

Dr. Sax gives hope to concerned parents (and disaffected young males) by giving concrete examples of young men whose lives were turned around by some simple changes. Enroll in an all-boy school. Get off unnecessary medications. Get unhooked from the video games and get involved in athletic competitions. Have examples of manly behavior from men. Experience the real world by getting outdoors. Do something physically demanding. Sweat.

For more information read the book and go to the website: www.boysadrift.com and www.singlesexschools.org.

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sax (author of Why Gender Matters) argues that boys are more unmotivated than in the past because of (1) changes in schools that make them less boy friendly, (2) video games, (3) medications to treat ADHD that cause changes to the brain, (4) endocrine disruptors in plastics that are reducing testosterone, and (5) devaluation of masculinity in our culture. I think my initial problem with this book is that I don't totally buy his premise that we have an epidemic of unmotivated boys. I agree with some of what he has to say about each of his five points, but he is prone to hyperbole and a doomsday outlook. He also loves to use anecdotes as if they prove his points. There are many better books about raising boys than this one.

[Heather in FL · Rating 4 out of 5]

So, we're doomed. That's what I got from this book. Thanks a lot, Dr. Sax. Unfortunately, so much of what he talks about has been done over generations and we're now seeing the dismal results.

Basically I think it comes down to the fact that we're ruining boys through co-ed education, ADD/ADHD misdiagnosis, video games, environmental estrogens, and missing male role models. And I think he's on to something. He makes a lot of sense. I hate it when people make sense when talking about bad things, lol. I really hate it when I feel like there's very little I can do about some of it.

I can't afford a private boys school, and my school district isn't going to have boys only classes. I agree with the author that accelerating education (what used to be 1st grade is now kindergarten, with homework to boot) hasn't helped the US at all and we expect too much of kids that young. I don't think the powers-that-be plan to reverse that action anytime soon even though it's clearly not working. I also agree with the author that the US curriculum focuses too much on book knowledge and not nearly enough on experiential knowledge. And much of the competition has been removed when everybody gets a trophy. Why should a boy work hard to be the best when everyone gets the same certificate he does?

Thankfully, I didn't have to deal with an ADD/ADHD diagnosis and resulting medication. While I believe there are many legitimate cases of ADD/ADHD, I think it's WAY over-diagnosed and over-medicated. And now it appears that the medication has negatively affected the portion of the brain that deals with motivation. I shudder to think of all the kids who were misdiagnosed and took the medication and may suffer from lack of motivation as a result.

The discussion about endocrine disruptors and environmental estrogens was frightening. I feel like we're killing ourselves slowly. And now I'm thinking it's a combination of processed foods and environmental estrogens that are affecting the country's waistlines, but that's a different discussion. But alligators with shrunken testicles from waters tainted by too many plastic bottles? Freaking scary.

The author also brings up a good point about missing male role models and disappearing cultural customs. If a boy doesn't have role models or rites of passage in his life, he's going to turn elsewhere (the media which won't necessarily show good role models -- reality TV, anyone? -- gangs, etc.) to fill that void.

Video game play is where I'm going to have a problem. My boys just love them, as does their father. But I know the boys (and probably the father, lol) shouldn't play them as often as they do. I need to find some alternate activities for them to participate in instead of video games. I have to admit laziness has played a role on my part. It's been easier on me to let them play something at home than forcing them to try new things and new activities, which would mean I have to find the activities and drive them places. But I'm harming them by letting them play so much, so that's going to change. I can see why it's so attractive to them: it's easier to accomplish things in a video game than it is the real world. But that shouldn't replace actually trying to accomplish things in the real world, and it appears that's what happens with some kids. I can also see the draw of being able to control something in a video game when you have little control in the real world. So I need to divert their attention. I need to work harder so they don't decide video games are a better place to be than real life. If my boys are more interested in video games than a relationship with a real person when they get older, I have failed as a parent.

So here's what I really got from this book: My boys need to play video games much less frequently than they do. I need to help them find something else to accomplish and instill pride that exists in real life. I need to find opportunities for experiential knowledge. I need to pay more attention to what's going into their bodies and try as much as I can to limit the endocrine disruptors. I need to stay involved and try to head off any school issues that can snowball into an "I don't care about anything" attitude. And I need to find more positive male role models to expose them to.

Wish me luck!

[Michael · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is infuriating. Breezily written, and a quick and accessible read, especially in the world of harried-parents-advice books, but it ultimately seems like a collection of facile, engaging, anecdotal, straw-man arguments in favor of the author's clear agenda: single-sex education, in which (presumably heterosexual) boys can pursue rough-and-tumble manly activities (competition, team sports, outdoor explorations) in lieu of what he portrays as the feminized, sedated, screen-heavy modern educational curriculum, in which boys are effectively doped into submission with a collection of stimulant medications.

Single-sex education, along with stripping out video games and endocrine-disrupting plastics, is portrayed in this book as the cure-all for diagnosed ADHD, lack of drive (he uses the Nietzcheian term "the will to power"), and boys whose parents and teachers found them unable to focus or stay engaged with school without the assistance of stimulants.

I want to emphasize, I am a dude. I like sports and hiking and fishing and competition. I attended an all-boys summer camp in the wilderness. I loved it and I think it's great for all kids to have outdoor education, time away from screens and desks, and opportunities to engage in healthy team competitions, whether it's in debate club or interscholastic sports. But Dr. Sax's argument is that boys specifically need this in their education, while girls can thrive in what he depicts as the desk-based, sedentary, relationship-driven, rules-following environment mandated by school systems. (There are periodic, "not all boys!" disclaimers in the text, but the intent is clear.)

I am not scientifically knowledgeable enough to weigh in on the lengthy piece about endocrine disruptors, particularly phthalates found in plastics. I'm certainly aware of the debate; since he wrote the book BPA has been taken out of most plastics for baby bottles, for instance. The literature has changed a lot. But there are some absurd side arguments, like saying that bottled water and drinks are rare in India or China and sold mostly to tourists. (The cite? A "personal communication" from a doctor with an Indian-sounding name.)

Whether or not I know the author's politics (I don't) I feel like he's set up the book to primarily engage social conservative parents, particularly those most comfortable with a traditionally gender-deterministic view of "boys are like x, girls are like y." Many of his most positive anecdotes (the dude loves anecdotes) are of parents who take their boy out of a traditional public school, or even a high-performing private school, and put him in an all-boy religiously affiliated school. Needless to say, he does not reflect on nonbinary or trans kids here. Nor does he reflect on kids who are queer. Those words literally do not appear in the index, although there are brief references to homosexuality in ancient Sparta and other cultures. The book is also casually xenophobic, such as a section about the low levels of American boys interested in going into trades (plumbing, construction, general contracting) compared with the workforce in those sectors around DC who come from El Salvador. Man, it's the DC area. Huge numbers of young men in the workforce are from El Salvador. And he favorably cites Charles Murray, he of the famously racist "The Bell Curve" argument, about why (white, middle class) boys might not want to go into trades or crafts. And of course he's opposed to the widespread availability of pornography and its impact on young men.

The section on "Failure to Launch," notwithstanding the dated Matthew McConaughey reference, has a lot of promise. But it falters with a long sequence of quoted emails and internet chatroom discussions from the parents, girlfriends, and spouses of these failed launches, not to mention some of the young men themselves. It seems like this could have been a really interesting chapter, but it fails to ... well, achieve second-stage separation, at least. And a lengthy chapter with the portentous title "The Revenge of the Forsaken Gods" is largely about the decline in traditional masculine, heteronormative virtues. He doesn't use the word chivalry, but he alludes to the traditional chivalric values in a number of instances.

Because this is a book largely meant to be read by parents (let's be honest: it's meant to read principally by mothers, based on the tone), this book concludes with some hands-on guidance, some of which is very reasonable in scope (get your boys outside in nature, push back against overly rigid academic expectations in very early childhood) and some of which is more eyebrow-raising. For instance, he wants mutual codes of parental conduct among school groups in which parents agree ahead of time about behaviors allowed and disallowed when their children interact outside of the house. There is the focus on plastic bottles again. And, of course, the advice to find a masculine-focused all-male outlet for your boys' energies, whether it's a sports team, a Boy Scout troop (sorry, dude, that ship has sailed), a religious retreat, or Sax's be-all, end-all, a single-sex all-boys high school.

Basically, Sax wants to reassert a traditional, patriarchal, gender-determinative worldview of rough-but-caring masculinity recast for the 21st century. And that is probably fine for a lot of people, but to cast that worldview as the solution for underperforming young men and boys seems like more of a philosophical and political argument than a medically justified course of treatment.

I have a gripe with the author's citations. He has a lot of endnotes to a mix of academic and popular sources, personal conversations, etc. A typical hodgepodge. Frequently he is making reference back to one of his own prior papers, which doesn't help much. But what I noted was a frequent authorial tic of citing an author with endnote 1, then endnote 2, and then concluding "Author x would argue ...." with no actual citation. I wanted to steal the xkcd "CITATION NEEDED" icon and stamp it in the library softback. (They are available online and highly recommended.)

[Elevate Difference · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of the attention Dr. Leonard Sax gets is for his advocacy of single sex education for boys. In his first book, Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know about the Emerging Science of Sex Differences, Sax described the developmental and biological differences between the sexes and how contemporary early education puts boys at a disadvantage. In his follow up, Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men, Sax elaborates on the modern crisis of maleness.

Sax is interested in boys, and tends to ignore females except as counter-examples, which is fine because one cannot be all things to all people. Sax also, in spite of himself, writes about a certain class of white affluent suburban boys. He tries to allay critics on both of these counts, with sometimes hilarious results. In explaining how inclusive his work is of all cultures, Sax offers this compelling example:

“Emily (or Maria or Shaniqua) goes to college...Justin (or Carlos or Damian) may go to college...”

I am still laughing. Maria, Shaniqua, Carlos, and Damian? Are we seriously playing a "Let’s think of Black- and Latino-sounding names" game? At least Sax is trying to fill the ethnic diversity requirement, even if he has a clunky way of showing it.

Regardless, the focus of Boys Adrift is the plight of affluent white boys living in American suburbs with a few generations of American living (read: consumerism and apathy?) pumping through their veins. “Damian” is actually not his concern. But whomever he is speaking about, Boys Adrift was written from Sax to parents.

From a hyper-academic kindergarten curriculum that favors females, to phlalates that leach into your Dr. Pepper and stunt mental development, Sax covers the basics of what we're talking about when we're talking about the modern crisis of manhood. He identified this crisis of boys as a “failure to launch,” an epidemic of fat, Halo-playing man-children who don't understand why everyone keeps telling them that they should move out of their parents house.

Gender issues aside, Boys Adrift would interest anyone seeking a comprehensive history of Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder and its treatments and the various, terrifying ways that environmental estrogen has infiltrated our bodies, wreaking physiological (early puberty in females) and societal (sexually mature girls in school alongside their prepubescent male peers) havoc on post-baby-boom generations.

The educational problems that Sax describes are applicable to kids of all kinds (even, dare I imagine, Shaniqua), and it's a little annoying to see them attributed to gender difference. Pegging problems like a struggle to pay attention and a failure to get decent grades to a condition of maleness might feel good to parents of a struggling boy, but to a female who failed similarly, it seems wholly unhelpful if not insulting.

There is a lot here, and Sax's work will comfort many parents, but the work is not without some contradictions. Early on in the narrative we learn that modern American schooling is not conducive to male brain and body development—it does not play to their strengths or their timetable. Later, Sax cites a statistically notable decline in boys’ intellect since the 1990s. The statistics rely on grades given in school. But if school works against boys, then their grades in school are not a fair or accurate measures of their intellect, so what use are they?

Recommended for those curious about education, gender, boys, men, and environmental estrogen.

Review by Ann Raber

[Leslie · Rating 2 out of 5]

For the first couple of chapters I was planning on giving this book one lonely star. I kept reading, it got a bit better and I ended up giving it two stars. Two stars still isn't a great recommendation but ultimately I decided it was worth reading. The middle section contained some information I'm at least glad to be aware of and the last three or so chapters were pretty good, even thought provoking, and for that I'm glad I read it. I found the "Failure to Launch" chapter especially interesting. I'm glad he included actual emails from people coming at that phenomenon from different angles; millennial women, parents of failure to launch sons, and failure to launch sons themselves.

But oh boy did I want to tear this book apart. Chapters 1&2 were full of stereotypes and assumptions that simply did not apply to my boys (I have four). That's fine, in fact I felt grateful that I totally could not relate to how this author was telling me I'm struggling with my boys. It still bothered me though, especially since Dr. Sax goes on and on about the difference of Wissenschaft (book learning) vs. Kenntnis (learning through experience). Come to find out Dr. Sax has one infant daughter! Oh. My. Goodness. I would venture to suggest that working with the myriad boys he has in a professional capacity is NOT the same as raising them as their parent. That's fine that he has lots of professional experience, but don't go off about the importance of experiential learning when you have NONE as a parent of boys. And come to think of it, he barely any experience as a parent at all. I'm sorry, but with an infant you're just getting started and haven't even touched any of the issues he's addressing.

Now that I've gotten that off my chest, I do appreciate Dr. Sax addressing an issue that truly is affecting the fiber of our society. It's an important issue, very relevant to me in that it's something I very much want to help my boys avoid. I'm glad for the discussion and the tools this book offers as my husband and I continue to raise our sons.

[Clumsy Squid · Rating 1 out of 5]

"Boys adrift" might raise your awareness of some subjects that deserve further reading and therefore could suffices as a primer into the the topic but even then I'd advice against reading it.
The book is chock-full of wild assertions without sufficient backing of reputable research and doesn't seem interested in uncovering underlying causes but seems satisfied with equating some of the symptoms with root causes. Many of his arguments don't hold up to any critical scrutiny.
And as if it wasn't bad enough that the author relies mostly on anecdotes instead of actual research , at least one fourth of the book is made up of emails that were sent to him.

Leonard Sax seems to be a populist who is interested in making sensationalistic assertions. If you are hoping to find a summary of current research look elsewhere.

[Seong Byun · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bad science at best, fear-mongering at worst.


First, I am not someone who thinks that if a book or an opinion is not based on academic research, then it’s automatically bad. To the contrary, I do believe that sound opinions could be formed based on anecdotes and personal experiences. But when a book claims scientific credibility with “being a PhD psychologist with a background in scholarly research” in addition to being a “board-certified family physician”, and that the five factors identified in the book are based on strong academic research, then I believe the book deserves additional scrutiny on its scientific merits. And this is where the book fails miserably. Below are just a few examples of bad science utilized to fit the author’s own narrative:


Claiming correlation as causation
The book claims that the widening gender gap in education (women are faring better than men in many dimensions) is due to things like video games, narrow focus on learning facts rather than more experiential learning (for example, standardized testing at schools), and the use of plastics (no joke!) that have also increased over the years. This narrative that video games make young men lazy and lead to academic underperformance is easy to like and fall into. But upon closer inspect, it’s easy to see that this just doesn’t hold in the data. For example, In the same data that the book uses, which is the % male undergraduates to total, the biggest declines in the percentage of male undergrads occurred before the 80s, well before the popularization of video games, and certainly not the “violent” ones that the author talks about in the book: The drop from 1970 to 80 is from 57.7% to 47.4%, a 10% drop, vs. a drop from 43.9% to 43.3% from 2000 to 2010, which is basically flat. So whatever caused this must have been occurring well before the 80s. I am not an expert in this field, but a quick search in the literature will show that more sensible explanation, such as the fact that colleges during that time opened up more to women and that the economic benefits from attending colleges are higher for women than men.

But even if we imagine that the timeline of the increase in video games and the use of plastics did coincide with the relative decline in male college enrollment versus women, wouldn’t you think that other factors like parental involvement and other reasons why a child was left all alone at home playing video games all day instead of studying, rather than playing video games, would have contributed to the decline?

Making huge jumps to conclusion
The book is also very good at using scary sounding research findings that have minor relevance at best and using them to justify the book’s assertion. For example, the book cites many of the studies on how chemicals like BPA and phthalates found in plastics (bottled water, pacifiers, and toys) have been shown to advance early puberty in girls and slows down puberty in boys, and uses these studies to make an association that these factors are the reasons why the boys are underperforming academically in the modern world. Out of curiosity, I looked up one of the paper the book cites on the effects of endosulfan on male reproductive development. Right from the abstract, it read that the incidences of congenital abnormalities for boys who were exposed to endosulfan vs. who were not was “5.1% vs. 1.1%.” Further, it also mentions that “the differences were statistically nonsignificant.” But even if the results were significant and we trust this result which the authors admit are small sample, the effect is, albeit potentially devastating to some boys, only affects about 5% of the sample of boys who were exposed. How are we going to then use these infrequent incidences to make a general statement about the broad trends we are seeing? In concluding the article, the authors themselves admit that “We do not know the significance of these findings” and that “long-term follow-up of the children is essential to understand the implications.” Yet this book is so quick to use this evidence to fit the narrative.

Are the young men really doing poorly these days?
I want to conclude this perhaps unnecessarily long review on asking whether young men these days are really underachieving compared to the older generations. Again, I am not an expert in this field, but at least based on the data given in the book, it’s unclear. The number given in the book are all showing numbers relative to women. So even if the young men are not really doing worse, the numbers may “look bad” by just the fact that women are doing better than ever before. In fact, I would venture to guess that the percentage of men graduating from high school or college have probably increased over the years, despite the fact that many of them are too busy playing video games while drinking off a plastic or aluminum bottle!

I am not denying that there are no gender differences that impact academic achievements, nor denying that there are issues with addiction to video games for some people. But creating problems where there isn’t, prescribing bad solutions, and playing to the fears of many parents who are going through difficult times with raising their children will only lead more young men to suffer and make matters worse.

[Anna Mussmann · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

The premise that boys today are struggling, especially in school, seems to be accepted more widely among conservatives than progressives. That’s why it’s so interesting to read a book about boys that’s clearly designed to appeal to mainstream audiences. Dr. Sax is quick to explain that girls too need help from the cultural and environmental forces hurting them, but that those issues are discussed in one of his other books. This volume is focused on the rising number of young males who “fail to launch” and the four factors he believes to be behind the problem.

1. Sax argues that schools today are not boy-friendly.

2. He says video games and porn are separating boys from real life.

3. He points to evidence that common ADD/ADHD medications may damage the portions of the brain connected to motivation and thereby make individuals less willing to work hard when they grow up.

4. He says phthalates from plastic may function as endocrine blockers and mess with children’s hormones. This may be linked to increasingly-early puberty in girls and delayed puberty in boys (because the phthalates function like female hormones). He connects this to alarming stats indicating that young men today have lower sperm counts and less bone density than previous generations.

5. He argues that all lasting cultures treat healthy masculinity as something to be taught, but that our own culture no longer teaches boys what it means to be a man.

I appreciate Dr. Sax’s recognition that lack of ambition and purpose among young men is a real, huge, important problem; and I gleaned a number of useful ideas from what he says. Yet his framing of these problems is not without weaknesses. The most obvious is the alarmist style in which he writes. He tends to use anecdotes and data as equally evidential and to speak as if a statistical increase in anything bad means that WE ARE ALL DOOMED to be hit with it. Calmer adverbs and adjectives would have made for a book more likely to convince folks who don’t already largely agree with him.

His social values also lead him into tension. On the one hand, he argues that boys are different from girls and this should shape how we as a society educate our children. In particular he insists that teaching boys how to be good men is far more productive than trying to act as if both sexes are exactly the same. Bravo! Yet he also wishes to reject any old-fashioned limitations on girls, and says that past cultures were “sexist” for preventing girls from becoming rabbis, medicine men, or whatever. He argues, “There has to be a third way. There has to be some alternative besides ignoring gender on the one hand, and pushing children into narrow and limiting gender roles, on the other. This third way must begin by recognizing the importance of gender, by embracing and celebrating the gendered nature of the human experience. We must use this new understanding of gender not to reinforce old-fashioned Leave it to Beaver notions of gender roles but rather to broaden horizons for both girls and boys.”

This sounds good. But what does it mean? The problem is that rejecting past and present cultures and attempting to build an entirely new one is very difficult. Saying, “We should just be nice and sensible!” isn’t enough. Is it possible to “celebrate gender” without defining it through any rules at all? If, for instance, we want girls to be “free” to serve on the front lines in military combat, will boys see any logic in our arguments that men should be protectors of women in general? I don’t have all the answers here, but I think Dr. Sax is missing something big.

Even he seems to sense this. He points out rather wistfully that “Scriptwriters seem unable to write a believable story about a boy becoming a heroic man set in our era. The scriptwriters go back five hundred years or more, or set their heroic epics in a science fiction past (Star Wars) or in a fantasy world (Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Eragon).” The comment reminds me of a passage in Cindy Rollins Mere Motherhood, in which she points out that our culture has become so feminized that most people would be appalled if a boy actually behaved the way the hero of most old-fashioned stores does and, say, attempted to lick the bully or save the girl.

This is where Christian faith is hugely helpful. I would argue that Christian teaching allows us to recognize created differences between the sexes without imposing unnecessary extra ones. Knowing which differences really matter theologically makes it easier to recognize which things are cultural or trivial.

I was also interested in Sax’s discussion of the differences between learning through experience and learning by acquiring abstract information. He points out that German uses different words for these types of knowledge. He would like to see much more experiential, hands-on learning in schools so that boys would be more engaged. To a point he is right--of course kids should dissect real frogs instead of doing it through a computer program. Yet if boys would tinker with engines at home, surely that would be more helpful in interesting them in engineering than asking teachers to bring engines into the classroom and direct the exploration. This highlights both a strength and a weakness in Sax's book. He's right that parents can't raise children in isolation: the entire culture is part of the picture. But he also tends to direct responsibility towards institutions and to blame "forces" like culture or plastics, which may erode the individual parent's sense of responsibility.

Overall, Sax’s book is a helpful contribution to an important conversation. It is likely to give moderate and progressive parents justification for meeting their sons unique needs and vocabulary to use in advocating for them in school settings. At the same time, it’s less helpful in offering solutions that run deeper than surface-level tweaks.

[Eileen Holt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Seriously a MUST read for anyone with sons. This book was very thought provoking. I felt the author was a reliable source based on both his research and personal experience.
My husband and I even purchased this book to use as a reference.
Boys Adrift isn't "how-to" parenting book. It brings up many issues that parents need to think about, ranging from ADHD medications, gaming, what motivates boys, and pornography.

[sophia the first · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read the girl edition of this book (Girls on the edge) and it scared me because it’s so true. As a teenage girl, I’m telling you he’s onto something. Anyways then I read the boy book because why not, might as well learn how to parent adolescent males. You can’t blindly believe everything he says but he’s definitely got some interesting things to say.

Not too fun of a read, great my generation’s messed up! But I’d definitely recommend this and his other books to any teenagers.

[Tanya Wadley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was so hard for me to get motivated to read... I renewed it 3 times, then checked it out again and renewed it three more times. So today I started over while substitute teaching (the teacher had everything well planned out, so I had a lot of reading time). There have been a few examples in the book that seem very overgeneralized and I have to admit I felt annoyed a few times. I'm left to wonder after reading it how much merit some of these theories have (I mean is it possible that these 5 factors have the greatest impact on unmotivated boys... I get video games... but plastics... I think it's a stretch!). It is also somewhat academic/laborious reading... but I'm glad I stuck with it as it also seems intelligent and is backed by enough research to warrant serious consideration and at least further research.

It's a little scary to see this growing "Failure to Launch" social phenomena. It's definitely not where I want my 3 boys to be.

The five factors Dr. Sax has found to be the most significant in the growing epidemic of unmotivated boys and underachieving young men are:
1- Changes at School
2- Video Games
3- Medications for ADHD
4- Endocrine Disruptors (plastics)
5- Revenge of the Forsaken Gods (referring to a lack of good male role models).

Having read this, I do not own and may not ever buy a video game console (if I do, I'll have a 30 minute limit). I'm going to transition from plastic to glass (I can hear the sound of breaking glasses and dishes in my mind as I write!). If ADHD medications are indicated... they aren't yet, I will try to avoid them. I will try to get my kids outside and into nature and hands on real-life activities more than I currently do (that's what they really love anyway!... not a surprise).

I really don't like the portrayal of how children are taught at school (a smart group that learns and a dumb group that plays in Kindergarten)... it certainly does not fit with our experience so far in elementary school .

Okay, so here are my notes and quotes, meant mainly for me:

Parents have been deceived about the value of computer-based experience for their children (it's not as valuable as "real-life" experience. Also, getting children out into the outdoors helps children with ADHD.

Team competition socialized boys (girls generally value friendship over team affiliatioon).

A girl who thinks she's smart will perform better; conversely a boy who thinks he's smart will not try as hard and thus will perform worse. "Build the girls up, break the boys down" captures the essence of research.

Boys want to be "master of their fate", video games give a feeling of power. Time spent on video games is inversely realted to success in school. There's a causal link between violent video games and antisocial behavior (it's more toxic than TV).

ADHD meds contribute to lack of drive when the childrem grow up (they damage the part of the brain responsible for tuning motivation to action).

Plastics (PET, phthalates) are associated with the early development of girls and emasculation of boys (they slow and disrupt puberty).

An interesting thought expressed by email to the author... "You mentioned 'the engine that runs the world.' As for me, I think that the engine is the love of a good woman and the ambitions we have together for the family we are raising and for the world we want them to inherit... Has our intellectual elite and our popular culture tinkered with 'the engine that runs the world'? Have we violated something that the ancients knew intuitively but which we have arrogantly ignored?" Kent Robertson... (speaking for myself, it seems that answer to that question must be yes looking at some of the trends discussed in this book). p.161

A boy does not naturally become a gentleman-- by which I mean a man who is courteous and kind and unselfish. That behavior is not hardwired, It has to be taught. p 163

Manhood isn't something that simply happens to boys as they get older. It's an achievement-- something a boy accomplishes, something that can easily go awry. If we ignore the importance of this transition, and fail in our duty as parents to guide boys through it, then we will learn the hard way why traditional cultures invest this transition with so much importance. p 171

What does it mean to be a "man"-- using your strength in the service of others. See also John 15:13. Loved the idea practiced by Georgetown Prep School (for boys)... "Somos Amigos". The boys go with chaperones 1:4... to the Dominican Republic and live among the Dominicans for 5 weeks. "You can preach all you like, but there's nothing like putting a shovel into a boys hands to teach him some lessons." Mr. Kowalchick (of G. Prep School).

Unless she's an actress or a supermodel, a woman's success in the world is less a function of her appearance than it is of her competence.. What you can do ulitmately matters more than how you look.

[Gina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have four boys. They have their issues, but they are pretty great. I am feeling optimistic that they are going to launch, at least the three oldest that I have a better read on. In fact, making sure they launch is like the main goal of my husband and my lives right now. "How can we be sure that all these children leave our house on or very shortly after their 18th birthday?" we say. "And take all their things with them?" I would feel extremely concerned if my boys were not on a path that seemed to be leading to launch, and I think it is nice that this book exists to support parents if they are feeling at a loss. Many of the things he discusses in here feel intuitively right to me. My oldest boy was an extremely active and energetic boy, and I worried a lot that going to school was going to be a disaster and I'd get the ADHD call, but somehow it never came and school has gone great for him. I credit this mostly to amazing and tolerant teachers who allowed him to stand and fidget at his desk as much as he needed to while doing his work. But I would have, without question, pulled him from school and found a different arrangement before drugging him for their convenience. I have a deep rooted fear of video games and frankly am astonished that any person in the whole world allows first person shooter video games into their house at all, much less allows their tender young boys to play them. I liked that advice for the most part. The plastics part was spooky. I really liked the discussion about how successful cultures provide a clearly marked route to manhood, guided by men.

Overall, though, I just didn't like the alarmist vibe. I didn't disagree with the advice, per se, but the tone would have scared me to death if I had read this when my oldest was a baby boy. The good news is that if you just don't buy a gaming system or many electronics, allow your boys to be bored sometimes, apparently luck out in the school department, and allow them to be fully responsible for lots of things in their lives from an early age like cleaning bathrooms and getting homework done (dovetails nicely with a general lazy, or shall we say laissez faire parenting style) things really can work out just fine. (Ask me in fifteen years, ha.) I guess the point of the book is that sometimes parents do all those things and their boys are still adrift, and that is really scary, and there is still plenty of time for things to get rocky in our home. The main virtue of the book, I think, is that it gives parents permission to think way outside the box and find a totally different sort of school and social situation for their boys if one is not working which is not easy but may be necessary.

But if you have a young son, take heart. Things can be ok.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr. Sax outlines in detail five factors that he claims are responsible for disengaging boys from school, life, and the real world of striving and achievement and loss. The five factors are 1) the feminization of the public school system, 2) video games, 3) medications for ADHD, 4) endocrine disruptors, and 5) the complex issues surrounding the transition from childhood to adulthood when so many positive role models for boys have been lost.

This was a fascinating book to read even if you don't entirely agree with the author's assertions and would make for a great book club discussion.

I was especially appreciative of the author's suggestions on how we might turn the situation around, and found myself thinking quite a bit about the men and boys in my life. Dr. Sax is a very strong advocate of single-sex education, and while that is not a viable option for my boys, I agree with many of his arguments for that kind of experience.

The take-home lessons for me include: the importance of being proactive in your child's educational experience; being very vigilant about the type of video games played and the amount of time spent playing them; thinking twice about microwaving food in plastic containers and drinking from plastic containers; being more understanding of wiggly boys; the importance of having multiple male role models for my boys as they make the transition to adulthood; and the importance of bonds between generations of males.

As an LDS mother of 3 boys, I found myself profoundly grateful for the programs of our church, missionary experiences, and the role Boy Scouts has in my boys' lives.

I highly recommend this book for any parent of boys.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book by a PhD researcher, and family physician about some of the headwinds affecting boys today.

The author focuses on five main areas, backed by research, that show what is contributing to boys not reaching their potential today:
1) Video Games. Studies suggest that some of the most popular video games are disengaging boys from real-world pursuits.

2) Teaching Methods. Profound changes in the way children are educated have had the unintended consequence of turning many boys off school. He eviscerates kindergarten today, and shows that the (largely) female population of teachers are expecting boys to sit and concentrate longer than they are developmentally able.

3) Prescription Drugs. Overuse of medication for ADHD may be causing irreversible damage to the motivational centers in boys’ brains. In particular, adderol and the like make boys concentrate, but remove motivation. Yikes.

4) Endocrine Disruptors (from plastic bottles, mostly). Environmental estrogens may be lowering boys’ testosterone levels, making their bones more brittle and throwing their endocrine systems out of whack.

5) Devaluation of Masculinity. Shifts in popular culture have transformed the role models of manhood. Forty years ago we had Father Knows Best; today we have The Simpsons.

I had a hard time disagreeing with anything in the book, and appreciated the mix of real-world encounters with research.

I especially enjoyed that the end of the book had an entire chapter devoted to, "okay, you've read about the problem - here are some ideas about what to do".

[Marcus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow! If you have a young boy you owe it to them to read this book. I am amazed how much has changed since I grew up in the late 1970' and early 1980's. Author describes how factors such as 1). Changes in school curriculum 2). ADHD medicine 3). Video games 4). lack of male role models & 5). Estrogen products in the environment combine to drive boys to "check out" from the real world and kill their motivation.

The improved video game graphics and internet make for a perfect escape from a boring academic environment with limited opportunities to "do things". Reading this book and reflecting, on my own experience I think the point is that young boys need to "do things" not "hear things". Also young boys need to be able to conquer some obstacle, competing in an uncertain environment for a prize. Modern schools discourage "doing" and "competing" because classroom teaching is cheaper and competing means someone's feeling may be hurt. Unfortunately video games fill this void. Leading many young boys to hate school and the real world prefering a fantasy world where they feel more alive. This book contains strategies for helping our boys to engage and thrive in the real world. Also how to protect them from estrogen in the environment (primarily from plastics such as bottled water) and overanxious school officials who want to prescribe medication to maintain order. Again a must read for parents

[Patty · Rating 2 out of 5]

From what I've read, it seems pretty clear that Leonard Sax has an agenda: he hails single-sex education and blames video games, ADHD medication, and estrogen-like substances in plastics as the cornerstones of "what's wrong with boys today." Those who agree with him will have lots of opportunities to nod along, but I doubt this book will change the minds of those who don't. He supports his claims with anecdotal evidence and fills his endnotes with cherry-picked scientific studies that are flatly contradicted elsewhere. This is an easy read and I'm not sorry I finished it, but I do recommend that readers keep their critical faculties engaged as they read rather than accepting all of his claims as scientific fact.

[Kieraclegg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Au Will re read again

[Holly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book basically confirmed a lot of gut feelings I’ve had plus taught me so much more. I want to give it to every educator and parent I know. Can’t wait to read Girls on The Edge.

[Gail · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was for book group and even though I'm done raising my one boy, the topic fascinates me. I think it's worth reading for everyone raising boys. Here are some notes I took.
1. don't give your boys the stimulant class of ADD meds, they shrink a certain part of a boy's brain and when he is off the drugs, seems lazy and less motivated. only tested on rats tho. I was sooooooo glad I never gave con meds even tho I wanted to because he had such a hard time focusing. He was SO strong willed he refused any discussions about finding out if he had ADD. In HS I even wanted him to take adderall... I'm so grateful Con was adamant about not taking ANY sort of drugs.

Evidently there are all sorts of studies about the effects of plastics/BPA/thalides on boys and girls. They affect hormones and slow down puberty in boys and advance it in girls. Environment estrogens are bad. They also make fat cells bigger. The author says humans are getting fatter, which we all know, but also dogs and cats, and even wild rats. More males have genital abnormalities, lower sperm counts, less testerone and more fertility problems due to hormone disrupters.

Make sure even your kids' toys and pacifiers don't have thalides. don't micro plastic of any type. Use glass and metal. don't give your kids sealants at the dentist unless they're free of thalides.

Don't try to talk to boys face to face, doesn't work. Talk shoulder to shoulder as in a car or walking.

the author thinks kindergarten now is too academic and boys can't sit all day so they hate school from the beginning. They need more competition in school. They need contact with nature daily where they actually touch and smell it.

Video games are obviously very compelling. if you're going to take them away, find something compelling to replace them with.

We need bonds between the generations. Dad is important to your boys! but other men as well.

Immigrant teens do better in US schools than US teens do but only for the first few years before they become like US teens.

Boys/young men don't want to work hard, do skilled labor. you can't find them in the US anymore but you can easily find drs and lawyers. they go to college but don't really know what they want to do.

boys are slower learners than girls when younger.

video games sap motivation to do other things like school, friends, exercise, sports, even girls. the author suggested 1 hour per day after all other tasks done. he said priorities for teen boys should be 1. family, 2- school, 3 friends, 4- video games

[Marcus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow! If you have a young boy you owe it to them to read this book. I am amazed how much has changed since I grew up in the late 1970' and early 1980's. Author describes how factors such as 1). Changes in school curriculum 2). ADHD medicine 3). Video games 4). lack of male role models & 5). Estrogen products in the environment combine to drive boys to "check out" from the real world and kill their motivation. I certainly would have been diagnosed with Attention Deficeit Disorder if I was growing up today, if my parents followed "medical advise" I would have been sedated so that I could pay attention in school. These drugs appear to kill motivation later in life. I am angered that the Pharmaceutical marketing machine has been permitted to profit off our substandard education system while possibly hurting our boys in the longer run.

The improved video game graphics and internet make for a perfect escape from a boring academic environment with limited opportunities to "do things". Reading this book and reflecting, on my own experience I think the point is that young boys need to "do things" not "hear things". Also young boys need to be able to conquer some obstacle, competing in an uncertain environment for a prize. Modern schools discourage "doing" and "competing" because classroom teaching is cheaper and competing means someone's feeling may be hurt. Unfortunately video games fill this void. Leading many young boys to hate school and the real world prefering a fantasy world where they feel more alive. This book contains strategies for helping our boys to engage and thrive in the real world. Also how to protect them from estrogen in the environment (primarily from plastics such as bottled water) and overanxious school officials who want to prescribe medication to maintain order. Again a must read for parents.

[Larissa Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

***3.5+ stars but rounding up - I especially recommend this book to any parent with a son under the age of 5 to add to the arsenal of important ideas to consider.

Dr. Sax is extremely educated (MD, PhD) and hard working (speaks around the country, written a bunch of articles and books).

I agree with most of his hypotheses even if they only represent a subset of modern maladies.
1) video games can create serious long term problems
2) ADHD over diagnosed and stimulant rx create more issues than you might think
3) current US school philosophy is generally not "boy friendly"
4) family unit crumbling and scarcity of appropriate male role models
5) endocrine disrupters are jacking reproductive health (best section imo)

His writing is avuncular, trying to share *his wisdom as he looks at a big picture colored by his extensive life lenses. I could probably capitalize that *h as he is likely a conservative Christian (inference not validated at Wikipedia yet). Some progressives will balk at the tone, but he does try to consciously ratchet back his preachy propensity. It is rather fear-based which does not appeal to me, but the anecdotal evidence from his practice and as feedback to his public presence are fascinating. Would like to have seen more positively applicable ideas for typical parents to implement.

The whole education section is aggravating in that good ideas are overshadowed by the fact that he advocates for things that are generally only accessible to the elite. While he absurdly seems to think most people will up and move even out of their own state for scholastic opportunities, he does acknowledge that most people are not in a position to change the system. I wonder what he is doing in that realm beyond writing books that may be getting attention by policy makers.

[Walt · Rating 3 out of 5]

With the name Eddy, perhaps you can imagine why I got interested in being adrift. You know, swirling around, unanchored, etc.

Anyway, I read BOYS ADRIFT recently, after my brother-in-law finished it. He seemed to like it, thought it had direct application.

My boys are grown up and men now. That doesn't necessarily mean they're totally moored, but it does mean the responsibility, even any deleterious consequences to themselves and others therefrom if they're not, has more or less shifted entirely to them. Nonetheless, my interest in boys doing well hasn't completely waned. Furthermore, I'm not above fussing over what I might have done better myself, even though it's too late.

I come to reviewing Sax's book late in the game. There are numerous comprehensive and valuable reviews out there. I won't add anything by being effusive. I will say this. The dynamic, the environment, the context in which children are raised today is much different than it was when I raised our four children, three of which were adopted, two of which were boys. BOYS ADRIFT deals with this new environment that differs significantly from the era they grew up in. From what I can tell, the book does a fairly good job. I enjoyed reading it and contemplating its suggestions and assertions.

If I were to make a recommendation, I would suggest that anyone reading this book read one in counterpoint to this one. One thing that seemed to escape me in my reading was a recognition in its narration that all characteristics of humanity, including those of boys, exist on a continuum. The fixes articulated won't work for everyone.

[Jocie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Coed education, video games, ritalin, toxins, no role models- oh my!

Trying to raise young MEN in our current culture? What makes a real man? NOT someone who is still living off of his parents of wife so he can lounge around, it seems most people are in agreement upon that... The IQ of young men has been dropping since the 90's, while 'failure to launch' has doubled. Why?

This book gives a lot of food for thought, and is research-based. I am not convinced about the toxins yet (maybe I don't know what to do about that, so I don't want to know!), pretty convinced that coed education is a bad idea (another item to add to the long list of what is wrong with public school in the U.S.). We are already against public school and ritalin, so that wasn't new, although I gained more information about how detrimental they are.

The only thing that I felt I could apply is that video games need to be balanced by thrilling real-life experiences. We have already limited the video games, but our sons are still languishing.

The importance of team competition to young men was also a new and important concept to me.

[Janssen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting and useful, I would think, for people with sons.

[Levi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great insights and research, especially as a teacher and, hopefully, a future parent! Well worth the read for insights that may be helpful for you if you teach, work with, or have boys.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Near the book's end, the author relates a story of three scholars, all of them women, investigating an experimental, boys-only public school. Their assessment was damning. They condemned the school for reinforcing traditional genders roles, as though traditional gender roles are worthy of nothing but criticism and dismissal. The author, rightly, notes that traditional gender roles can be both good and bad; for example, it is good for men to sacrifice their wellbeing for the sake of their wives and children. He also, rightly, noted that the investigators' assessment was wholly negative. They tore ideas about traditional gender roles to pieces and left nothing in their wake, leaving boys and men bereft of guidance about living well as males. Unfortunately, this criticism also applies to this book.

On the whole, this book is superb. It's one of the most shocking books I've read in recent memory. Its analysis of the five things that disproportionately affect young men--developmentally inappropriate schooling; videos games and pornography; overprescription of psychiatric meditation, especially for ADHD; endocrine disruptors, which preferentially affect male sex hormones; and the destruction of positive models of masculinity--painted a terrifying picture of young adulthood that I am all too familiar with, having struggled with the middle three myself. I'll outline each of the five things.

Developmentally inappropriate schooling: being a boy is as bad for school performance as being poor is. This isn't true for girls, and hasn't been for almost three decades. Why is that? First, and although this truth is often denied, because sex differences are real. In many ways, young male brains develop more slowly than young female brains. This means that, typically, girls are ready for the rigours of school before boys are. Girls are more to able sit, focus, concentrate, and enjoy school than boys who often, at kindergarten age, are naturally and uncontrollably wriggly. Having boys start school one year later than girls, at age six instead of five, improves lifetime school attainment. This is because, at six years of age, boys' brains are developmentally ready for the unique demands of school. They have developed more self-control. They can sit (relatively) still. They can understand the importance of obeying commands.

Second, schools increasingly disapprove of competition. Girls and boys are motivated by different things. Many boys thrive on competition, and will zone out of anything that doesn't have a competitive element. This is one explanation for the common phenomenon of smart but disinterested boys, and of boys interested in competitive e-sports and nothing else. Reintroducing competition to schools has been found to increase boys' engagement with school, because competition for status and mastery is one of the main drivers of male behaviour. Boys need to be able to compete, preferably in the form of competition between teams. Teams-based competition prevents boys from disengaging if they correctly understand that they might not win on their own merits, and avoids the many problems of highly individualistic competitions.

Video games and pornography: video games are addictive. If you don't think so, you either haven't played modern video games, are a female, or are a boomer. They're addictive for multiple reasons, one of which ties in with what I've written up above: they provide boys and men with instant, easy access to highly novel and interactive competitions. This means that videogames are hijacking the architecture of male motivation. Whereas men used to compete for female attention, athletic mastery, mastery of a trade, or against each other on a battlefield, nowadays nothing can match the thrill of following dozens of real people's digital avatars into a battle that game developers spent tens, sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars perfecting. You can coordinate your decisions in real-time, outmanoeuvre skilled opponents, and feel the thrills of surprise and success many times each minute.

In my early 20s, I was obsessed with a particular kind of role-playing that let you change the game's narrative, in both big and small ways, by choosing your own dialogue from a limited number of presets. This meant that I could meaningfully influence the outcome of storylines that involved the fate of galaxies and the deaths of friends and lovers. I was in charge. My decisions changed the world. It is every male's fantasy to be a war hero, or a political leader, or a prolific seducer of beautiful women. And in these games, I could have it all, and on my terms. It was not uncommon for me to stay up all night, through to seven AM, playing these games. It was just so thrilling. Eventually, I gave up games altogether. They had started to ruin my life. I was always tired, which jeopardised my position at work; I preferred romancing digital people to romancing my gorgeous real-life girlfriend; and I preferred video games' epic storylines to the more banal ones of my real friendships. But I may have got off easy.

I borrowed this book from my grandmother, who bought it for her son, my uncle. His son, my nephew, has just started developing his own video game addiction. Another nephew on my mother's side has had the same problem for years. He spends hours every day playing Fortnight. Both boys were in their very early teens when their addictions started. Both have disengaged from school. Both have become more irritable and withdrawn. My experience with video game addiction didn’t really get going until I was in my early 20s, by which time I’d already mastered the rudiments of reading, writing, and rhetoric, spent hours on obscure internet forums debating niche philosophy with practicing academics, and developed an overriding love for reading, all of which got me through my university degree and, later, helped me overcome my addictions. I’m an autodidact. My nephews, though, are succumbing to all-consuming addictions in the most important years of the young lives, and risk damaging their motivational architectures before they’re even built. I’ve worked with literally dozens of boys whose sole hobby is video gaming. They barely made it out of high school, didn’t even consider university, landed a basic job, and, in one case more than 13 years later, never moved on. To me, this sounds an awful lot like weed dependence. It seems harmless, appears to make its users happy, and absolutely shreds ambition. Both make their users indifferent to their own wellbeing. Boys who obsessively play video games are at risk, not only of failing to reach their potential, but of not developing a desire for anything not to do with gaming. This leads into the third issue.

Overprescription of psychiatric medications: this ties into both of the topics already mentioned. What do you do with boys who won’t sit still? For some people, the answer involves diagnosing them with ADHD and prescribing stimulant drugs. What do you do with boys who won’t focus on their schoolwork? For some people, the answer involves diagnosing them with ADHD and prescribing stimulant drugs. This is the wrong thing to do in both scenarios, but it is increasingly common. ADHD diagnoses among boys have increased 10-fold in the last 10 years. One reason is the first: very young boys are often not developmentally ready for modern schooling. They fidget, struggle to concentrate, act up, cause disruptions. In short, they’re wiggly! And this is totally normal. But modern schools pathologise it. Girls are fine—they’re developmentally ready. Boys, though, may hate school so much in their first years that they develop a lifelong aversion to it. This happened to me. It may have been best for my parents to have held me back a year. By sixth grade, I was organising in-class protests against the very idea of schoolwork, and by eight grade I had zoned out completely, using the time I should have spent completing teacher assigned tasks researching UFOs or drawing doodles in my schoolbook, and by my final years of high school I had simply stopped doing any kind of school work. Fortunately, my love of reading meant that the study of certain subjects has been a breeze for me throughout my entire life. Reading, though, is more and more something that only boomers do. Kids don’t read much anymore, and my salvation simply isn’t a viable solution for most children nowadays. Videogames and streamed media are much more alluring.

But I digress.

Due to their natural developmental delay, relative to girls, boys are being prescribed medications to help them sit still. They are being diagnosed with ADHD 10 times more often than they used to be decades ago, and they are being diagnosed and prescribed ADHD medication 10 times more frequently than girls. I should not have to convince anyone of the immorality of giving children medicines which can derail their brain development and permanently change (read: destroy) their ability to concentrate and self-motivate. Yet, this is happening on a massive scale. It is a moral disaster and proof that our civilisation has its priorities all wrong. It is not uncommon for kindergarten children to be given psychiatric medication meant to help them sit still and be more compliant with teacher. This sort of intervention should only be used in prisons and mental health institutions—which, in all fairness, schools have come more and more to resemble. It is an invisible straitjacket, and its consequences are lifelong. The young boys who are being fed these vile pill-shaped concoctions will have the behaviours these meds are supposed to suppress exacerbated and transformed from proofs of normal, healthy development into proofs of permanent personality. These kids, who are normal, not disabled, will be made disabled, some for life.

There is strong evidence that young boys given prescription ADHD medication will suffer from poor impulse control, an inability to focus, and trouble self-motivating later in life. These are the kinds of boys who fall for addictions to videogames, pornography, social media, etc., and who suffer the consequences of wrong ambition. It’s easier to watch porn than to satisfy a partner; it’s easier to play videogames than to endure real, meaningful struggle; it’s easier to doomscroll through social media than to form lasting friendships, and so on. All of these substitutes for real life are what the prescription drug-fucked young boys will prefer when they grow up.

Fourth, endocrine disruptors: for me, this was the most shocking section of the book. My main takeaway was about the disproportionate damage endocrine (hormone) disruptors wreak on male physiology. A summary quote says something like this: they feminize women and render boys of neither gender. Endocrine disruptors, found in plastics, tap water, canned food, baby formula, etc., make girls sexually mature faster while retarding sexual maturation in boys. My teacher partner confirms this via anecdote: in her experience, girls in high school are looking like grown women from increasingly younger ages, whereas boys look prepubescent long after the girls have grown. Endocrine disruptors damage both genders, but their effects are worse in boys, causing genital deformities, smaller cocks and balls, lower testosterone levels, and higher rates of prostate cancer. Testosterone is central to male mental health. Towards the start of this book, the author spends a lot of time detailing the ways motivation differs between boys and girls. Without testosterone, boys are less driven to succeed in all areas of life. Endocrine disruptors, then, produce men with low testosterone, sex drive, and global ambition. Clearly, this, too, is a disaster. The consequences of generations of apathetic, sexless men should be clear enough to anyone who gives the problem even one moment of thought.

And last, the destruction of healthy male role models: this one is more controversial. Celebrity culture is ruinous; social media incentivises narcissism and short-term behaviours; and meaningful debate about gender roles have all made traditional masculine ideals less common and sought-after than they once were. But strong role models still exist. I won’t belabour this point, as it’s more speculative than the others and more contentious.

On the whole, this book was an insightful read into the problems facing contemporary young men and boys. The struggle is real. It's solutions, however, are useless. The author seriously recommends that parents sign teenaged boys up for legal street races. This is not a meaningful solution: first, how many boys are interested in street racing? And second, how many people even have access to such a thing? It's like recommending moving country as a cure for seasonal depression. It's far easier said than done. He also recommends parental supervision. This is nonsense boomer-speak. When has parental supervision ever solved anything. You can't police access to the internet anymore. It's too ubiquitous. Of course, you can always tyrannise your children by confiscating devices, imposing curfews, disallowing the ownership of video game consoles, etc., but these helicopter parent tactics are unlikely to make your children love you.

Frankly, his remedies were total shit.

His analyses of the problems, though, were spot on.

The retreat into the virtual at the expense of the real, and the emasculation of healthy biological masculinity via endocrine disruptors and prescription medication, present real difficulties for parents of boys and for the young men themselves as they grow up. I would recommend this book to every parent of a young boy and to every young man.

[KC · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a parent of boys, I am motivated to understand the challenges and pitfalls that await as I do what I can to launch them into responsible contributors to society. In this book, the author identified five major problems linked to lack of motivation and underachievement among modern boys and young men. The first is a relatively recent change in the education system, in which competition is discouraged and a more coddling approach is taken. This apparently goes against fundamental male instincts of achievement and accomplishment and leads to discouragement and disengagement. Next are video games—primarily violent ones. Aside from a time sink, its primary danger is in creating in the brains of the players a sense of achievement that does not actually exist in the real world. Although not necessarily causative, the rise of video popularity and young men still living with their parents are correlated. ADHD meds are the next target: the pathologization of demotivation and distraction has led to mass prescriptions of ADHD medication that apparently has long-term side effects. A part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens is related to motivation and drive, and ADHD meds have proven to have a stifling effect on its development. Kids that were on meds grow up to be unmotivated adults—not for reasons of character, but for reasons of neurology. Plastics are in the crosshairs next, with environmental PET’s effect on the endocrine system blamed for hormonal anomalies among both girls and boys. But in boys, the natural effects of testosterone are muted, leading to the “soy boy” effect—producing men whose endocrine systems do not govern the body in the way it has evolved. The final aspect is more societal: effective masculine role models are in short supply, and the alternatives are not doing anyone much good.

[Sarah Mismash · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a mom with two young boys, I am so glad I found this book now, before they’re in school. It was well researched and had some really practical suggestions, which I feel like is critical with a book like this!


Some of my notes are below:

-boys should be starting school around 6 (or 7!) because that’s when they’re developmentally ready to start learning to read and write. Helps them have a more positive experience with school at the beginning which sets the tone going forward.

-children (and especially boys) are more motivated to learn when they’re learning about something they care about. The life cycle of a frog, for example, is much more relevant when you have held or caught an actual frog or seen tadpoles in a pond

-many boys thrive in team competition environments (like hogwarts houses, sports teams, etc) when they feel like anyone can win and when there will be a clear winner and loser.

-giving young kids stimulants (like adhd medication) can cause permanent damage to the part of their brain that is responsible for translating motivation into action. (The nuclear accumbens). The smaller this area is, the more apathetic, and the less driven a person is.

-video games affect the nucleus accumbens similarly to cocaine: by engorging it, while diverting blood flow from the part of the brain that contextualizes success in the real world. It rewards the brain the same way major successes do, and distorts and displaces motivation (keeping people from having the same interest in real world success)

-boys are being medicated to fit their school. Consider different school options (including all boy schools, forest school for kindergarten, etc)

-create communities of parents who hold the same standard. Work together with them to change schools, hold boundaries with kids, change culture.