Leonard Sax: Boys Adrift. The five factors driving the growing epidemic of unmotivated boys and underachieving young men

(Boys Adrift will be published on August 13 2007)


Here is how Dr. Sax summarizes his second book, Boys Adrift:


I have been a practicing physician for 21 years. For the past 17 years, I have worked in a suburb of Washington DC. Ten years ago, I began noticing something odd. I'd find a particular family where the daughter was motivated, hardworking, and successful - while her brother was an under-achiever. I've now documented this pattern hundreds of times just in my own practice. Emily is a straight-A student determined to get into a good college, while her brother - just as smart as Emily - has none of her drive.

In the past seven years, I have visited over 200 schools around the United States, Canada, and Australia. I have met with teachers, spoken with parents, and listened to children and teenagers from every demographic group. I've found that this pattern - "driven girls, directionless boys" to use Professor Judy Kleinfeld's phrase - is becoming more common everywhere you look. You'll find it in cities, in suburbs and in rural areas; among White, Black, and Latino families; and in affluent, middle-income and low-income neighborhoods. (Boys whose families have recently immigrated from East Asia or South Asia - from Japan, China, Singapore, India, Pakistan, etc. - appear to have some degree of immunity to this emerging epidemic. But the longer those boys live in this country, the more likely they are to begin manifesting this weird syndrome of apathy and lack of motivation.)

What's going on?

I've spent every available moment for the past seven years researching this question. I've published scholarly articles for the American Psychological Association and the American Academy of Family Physicians. I've written op-eds for newspapers such as the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and the Philadelphia Daily News; and I've corresponded with more than a thousand parents and their sons. I've seen this question grow from my own personal mission to become a national topic of debate and the central theme of movies such as Failure to Launch.

And now, finally, I think I've figured it out. I've identified five factors which are driving this phenomenon. And I've seen what works: what parents can do to turn this thing around and get their sons back on track.