Boys Adrift

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Over the past fifty years, college campuses have undergone a sex change: they’ve changed from majority male to majority female. Here are the numbers for the male proportion of students enrolled in four-year colleges and universities in the United States, 1949–2006:

        1949: 70 percent of undergraduate students were male
        1959: 64 percent were male
        1969: 59 percent were male
        1979: 49 percent were male
        1989: 46 percent were male
        1999: 44 percent were male
        2006: 42 percent were male

Colleges and universities now are scrambling to recruit qualified males. One mother told me that when it was time for her son to apply to college, she had some worries that turned out to be misplaced. Her recollection of her own college experiences thirty years ago led her to be concerned that admission offices would discriminate against her son, because, after all, he is a white male. “Instead,” she said in her e-mail to me, “I found that males today are on the receiving end of a kind of affirmative action for any boys who test well. This gets them into college, but doesn’t teach them how to cope with the bigger choices they will eventually have to face.”

Male students attending four-year colleges and universities today are now significantly less likely than their female peers to earn high honors or to graduate. Just thirty years ago, the opposite was true: in that era, young men were more likely than young women to graduate. Today, Justin is significantly less likely than his sister Emily to go to college, less likely to do well at college, and less likely to graduate from college. This is not an issue of race or class. We’re talking about brothers and sisters from the same family. They have the same parents, the same resources.

Certainly, not all boys have been infected by this weird new virus of apathy. Some are still as driven and intense as their sisters. They still want the same independence, financial and otherwise, for which we expect young people to strive. Because we still see some of these successful young men around us, it’s easy to miss the reality that more young men than ever before are falling by the wayside on the road to the American dream. The end result, then, are frantic parents wondering why their son can’t, or won’t, get a life. He’s adrift, floating wherever the currents in the sea of his life may carry him—which may be no place at all.

Why does one young man succeed, while another young man from the same neighborhood—or even the same household—drifts along, unconcerned?

Where is he headed?

Is there anything you can do about it?

Those will be the central questions that you and I will explore together.

For the past seven years, I’ve spent every available moment studying these questions. In 2001, I wrote an academic paper on this topic for a journal published by the American Psychological Association. In 2005, as I mentioned, I published my first book, Why Gender Matters. That book was in part a progress report on my research on this question, although I also addressed some of the ways in which American society has become toxic to girls.

In addition to being a board-certified family physician, I have the advantage of being a PhD psychologist with a background in scholarly research. So I’ve been able to investigate what I’m seeing, quantitatively and systematically. I’ve talked with parents and with their sons in large cities like New York, Chicago, Toronto, and Los Angeles, as well as in smaller cities like Daytona Beach and San Antonio and Cleveland and Calgary and Memphis. I’ve visited schools in affluent suburbs like Chappaqua, New York and Shaker Heights, Ohio and Potomac, Maryland and in the “nicest” areas of San Francisco and Tampa, as well as the “bad” areas of North Philadelphia and Dallas and Columbus (Ohio); and also in diverse rural communities. After seven years, I think I’m finally getting a handle on what’s going on. I’ve identified five factors that are driving this phenomenon. I’m also finally in a position to share some tested strategies to decrease the likelihood that your son will succumb to this epidemic of apathy—as well as practical tips for helping your son find his way back if he’s already disengaged.

More Than Just School

This book begins with a careful evaluation of how the theory and practice of education have changed over the past forty years, and how those changes have disengaged a growing proportion of boys from school. That’s the first factor, which I take up in chapter 2. But this book is about much more than boys disengaging from school. In chapter 5, for example, we will consider evidence that some characteristics of modern life—factors found literally in the food we eat and the water we drink—may have the net effect of emasculating boys. We will see that the average young man today has a sperm count less than half what his grandfather had at the same age. Likewise, a young boy today has bones that are significantly more brittle than a boy of the same age thirty years ago. The explanations for the drop in sperm counts and for the decline in bone density are complex, as we will see. We will find that the parent who said something about “plastics” may not be so wacky, after all.

In chapter 3, we will explore in detail the controversy surrounding video games. We will hear from respected scholars who insist that video games are good and useful for children, both girls and boys. We will hear from other scholars who have found that video games disengage kids from the real world, scholars who believe that the harm video games do in terms of motivation and violent behavior far outweigh any cognitive benefit. You’ll see that I tend to side with those researchers who give thumbs-down to video games, but I will make every effort to let you decide for yourself who’s right.

In chapter 4, I talk at length about the growing tendency to prescribe medications such as Adderall, Ritalin, Concerta, Metadate, Focalin, Dexedrine, and other stimulants to American children, particularly boys. We will explore research suggesting that these medications may have adverse consequences that your doctor may not know about—adverse consequences not for cognitive function, but for motivation. The most serious cost of taking these medications may be a loss of drive.

In chapter 6, we will begin to calculate the consequences of these four factors—not only in terms of academic achievement, but also in parameters that are harder to quantify: parameters such as pursuing a real-world goal or sustaining a romantic relationship. Chapter 7 introduces a fifth factor specific to the culture of North America in the twenty-first century—and contrasts modern North American culture with the culture of other continents and other times. In the closing chapter, chapter 8, I try to pull all five factors together and consider specific strategies that parents, educators, counselors, and others involved in the lives of boys and young men might usefully deploy. I will also recommend some relevant strategies at various points throughout each chapter.

Please don’t misunderstand me. When I talk about the problems I’m seeing in the boys whom I encounter in my practice, I’m not saying that girls don’t have problems. Girls have problems too. I know just as many parents who are concerned about their daughters as I know parents who are concerned about their sons. But the problems are different.

        •   “I told my eleven-year-old daughter that under no circumstances would her father and I allow her to buy those low-rise jeans. I just couldn’t believe that any store would even have such an item on sale for girls her age. But she said we were totally clueless. When her father and I held our ground, she started shouting ‘You’re ruining my life! Why do you hate me?!’ How are we supposed to handle that?”

        •   “My Samantha has never had any problems making friends. But something happened at the start of eighth grade. She says that her best friend—or the girl she thought was her best friend—totally betrayed her and started saying things about her that aren’t true. Cruel things. And now she’s the odd girl out. I hear her crying at night into her pillow and it breaks my heart, it really does. But I don’t know what to do. She doesn’t want me to interfere.”

        •   “Caitlyn is always talking about how she wants to be a size two or a size zero. She looks beautiful just the way she is: five feet four, 120 pounds, size four or size six depending on the label. Everybody says what a pretty girl she is. Still she’s always talking about how fat she is and how she needs to lose weight. I’m worried she’s at risk for an eating disorder.”

These are serious problems, every bit as difficult and as consequential as the boys’ issues I will address throughout the book. But the problems the girls face are different from the boys’. The girls’ problems are no less important. Just different.

This book is about the boys—and the five factors driving their growing apathy and lack of motivation.