165： Boys Adrift ｜ Dr. Leonard Sax
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Summary
Dr. Leonard Sachs joins me to talk about 5 factors that are driving an epidemic of unmotivated and underachieving young men, how the school system needs to be overhauled if we are to re-engage our boys, the dangers of endocrine disruptors in men s lives, and how boys are going adrift.
Transcript
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Continuing on the theme from last week, because I believe that this is such a critical topic
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right now. Today, we talk about the fact that young boys seem to be going astray. The school
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system is stacked against them. Society seems to be dismissing masculinity altogether. And being a
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man is something that actually has to be defended. My guest today, Dr. Leonard Sachs, joins me to
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talk about five factors driving an epidemic of unmotivated boys and underachieving young men,
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how the school system needs to be overhauled if we are going to re-engage our boys,
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the dangers of endocrine disruptors in men's lives, and how boys are going adrift, and more importantly,
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how to get them back on track. You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace
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your fears and boldly chart your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time,
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every time. You are not easily deterred or defeated, rugged, resilient, strong. This is your life.
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This is who you are. This is who you will become. At the end of the day, and after all is said and
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done, you can call yourself a man. Gentlemen, what is going on today? My name is Ryan Mickler,
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and I am the host and founder of this podcast, the one you're listening to right now, Order of Man. I
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am so glad that you're here, that you're joining with us, that you're not only listening to the
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podcast, but you're out there in your families, your businesses, your neighborhoods, your communities,
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and you're doing the work of men. Lord knows we need this now more than ever. It's been a crazy
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week. I'm just getting back into the swing of things after a very, very successful uprising
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event. That's a three and a half day experience that we do with 24 men who fly in from all over
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the country. In fact, we actually had somebody fly in from France in this last event. So we're
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going international with this thing as well. So getting back into the swing of things with that,
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getting on top of everything, planning our new event, which is a father and son event coming up in
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September. I'll talk with you more about that later in the show, but man, I'm busy. I know you're
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busy. You can listen to a thousand other podcasts, but you are here joining in this mission of
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reclaiming what it means to be a man in a society that seems to be more and more losing sight of
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what it means to be a man. And I said in the opening remarks that it's fascinating to me that
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masculinity actually has to be defended. It seems like it's the case more and more and you and me and
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millions of other men across the planet are again, banded together to make sure that
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the world knows what it is that we should be doing as men and then sees us stepping up as men.
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So I'm glad that you're here. I'm glad you're tuning in. We've got an incredible, incredible
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show lined up with somebody I've been following for a while. In fact, I was introduced to him
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through my wife. I'm going to talk more about that in a minute, but before I do get into that,
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discount. So guys, with that said, I want to introduce you to my guest today. A lot of you
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are probably familiar with his work and his books. His name is Dr. Leonard Sachs. Again,
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I was introduced to him through my wife. Uh, she picked up a couple of books several years ago.
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I want to say on her pursuit to more effectively raise our boys. I've got three boys and a little
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girl. And of course, we're always interested in learning new information that we can help
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raise our children. Right. Uh, she came across the books, boys adrift and why gender
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matters. And after she got done reading those, she asked if I would. And from the opening remarks,
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I knew that this guy had some of the answers to the challenges that I, as a father seem to be
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facing in raising my young boys. And I'm sure because I've gotten messages from you that you have
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as well in raising boys and being involved in the community and in our young men's lives.
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Dr. Sachs is a MIT graduate. He's a physician. He's a psychologist. Uh, he's been practicing for
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nearly 30 years and he is well-versed as you're going to hear today in very, very important gender
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issues and the crisis our young men and women seem to be facing today. Dr. Sachs, thanks for joining
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me on the show today. Excited to have you on. Thanks for inviting me. Yeah. I've been following
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your work. I was actually introduced to your work through my wife who's read all of your books and
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she got me turned onto those books as well. And I'm really excited to have this conversation
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specifically about boys adrift, because I think there really is a struggle with men in general.
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And I think we've begun, or maybe it's been going for a while to lose our way. So I'm anxious to have
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this conversation because it is a critical time for boys. And you seem to be the, uh, the subject
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matter expert on this stuff. Thank you. So talk to me a little bit. I mean, as we, as we create the
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framework for the discussion today, talk to me about generally the struggles and the challenges
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that boys are facing, and then we can get a little bit into the specifics about why that is and how we
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begin to address these problems. Well, you know, this topic can be controversial and I've done this
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in a debate format with professors of women's studies at various universities. And they'll often say,
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what are you talking about? You know, look at the fortune 500 CEOs are still overwhelmingly men.
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Look at the world's wealth. It's still overwhelmingly controlled by men. So where do you get off saying
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that boys are having problems? So I think it's important to start by looking at the data, look at
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how kids are doing in school. There's a growing gender gap in academic achievement across the United
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States with boys falling farther and farther behind girls. And this is true across just a very wide
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range of parameters in the school. Who's earning the best marks? Who's the valedictorian? Who's editing
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the school yearbook? Who's graduating with honors? And in most cases, the gap is widening, not because
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girls are doing better, but because boys are doing worse compared to how boys used to do. So I'll give you
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one example. Way back in 1980, National Endowment for the Arts surveyed a large sample of American
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teenagers coast to coast and asked them, what do you like to do in your free time? They like to play
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outdoors, play sports, read books. They were especially interested in who's reading books for
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fun. And they found in 1980 that there was a slight gender gap, that girls in 1980 were a little bit more
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likely to read books for fun in their spare time than boys were. But then more recently, two researchers,
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Mark Barline and Sandra Stotsky went back and did the same thing. Once again, surveyed a large
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and demographically representative sample of kids across the United States and asked them, what do
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you like to do for fun? And they found, and I'm quoting now from their report, that the gender gap has
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become a chasm, that reading for fun has become a marker of gender identity, that girls read and boys
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don't, end quote. And that's not true because girls are reading more today. Girls are not reading more
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today. Girls today are reading a little bit less than girls were reading in 1980. But American boys
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have stopped reading altogether. It's unusual today to find an American boy who reads for fun
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in his spare time. And as I said, this is true across a wide range of parameters. Look at who's
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graduating from university in the United States. 40 years ago, men outnumbered women. Today, women
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outnumbered men 57-43 last year among those who graduated from four-year universities. You look
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at who's graduating with highest honors. You find that women now outnumber men 3 to 1. That's a huge
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change compared with 40 years ago. 40 years ago, men were overrepresented among those graduating with
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highest honors. 40 years ago, women were more likely than men to drop out of college, often because
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they were getting married and starting a family. Today, young men in the United States are much
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more likely to drop out of college than their sisters are. And it's rarely because they're
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staying home to raise baby. More often, it's because they're going back to their parents' home to play
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video games in their parents' basement. So you look at who's taking advanced placement exams, who's
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earning the best marks, who's editing the school newspaper. You know, I graduated, I attended public
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schools in Northern Ohio, K-12. I was editor-in-chief of my high school newspaper. The editor before me
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was a boy. The editor before him was a boy. I can't remember a girl being editor of a high school
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newspaper. It was always a boy. My high school newspaper has three editors this year, all girls.
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I was on the debate team. Most of the kids on the debate team were boys. My high school has a debate
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team now. It turns out they're all girls. You know, when did boys decide that arguing is not something
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boys do? There's been this massive exodus of boys from academic achievement, working hard to get a
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better mark. You know, 50 years ago, Sam Cooke had a number one hit song in the United States. Don't know
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much about history. He's saying, now, I don't claim to be an A student, but I'm trying to be, because maybe
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by being an A student baby, I could win your love for me. He goes on to mention French geometry and
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trigonometry as subjects in which he's going to try harder to earn an A instead of a B.
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That wouldn't happen today. It's impossible to imagine Akon, Eminem, 50 Cent, Bruno Mars,
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Justin Timberlake singing about how they want to try harder to earn an A instead of a B.
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The culture has shifted, and working hard to get a good mark is now seen by many boys as uncool,
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as unmasculine. Why has that changed? Is that changes in the educational system and the
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way that we are being taught as boys? Why did that happen? So that's a major focus of my book,
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Boys Adrift. The subtitle is The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys
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and Underachieving Young Men. And those five factors are education, video games, stimulant medications for
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attention deficit disorder, endocrine disruptors, which are lowering testosterone levels dramatically,
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and the revenge of the forsaken gods. So those are the five factors. When I speak to parents,
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I usually talk about factors two, three, four, and five. I just did this talk, let's see, two days ago
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in Silicon Valley, Mountain View Los Altos. Incidentally, that was a repeat. They had me do the same talk
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there 10 years ago and invited me to come back and do it again because the superintendent, Dr. Harding,
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told me that he's just seeing this problem getting worse, that boys have no interest in earning top
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marks or earning academic honors. And he's a father of four boys and he wants to know more about why this
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is happening. But very quickly, that first factor for your listeners, again, I do one and two day
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workshops for schools sharing what I've learned. I've visited now more than 400 schools over the last 17
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years. And I've learned a lot about how you make school friendly to boys without making it unfriendly
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to girls. But let me just give you an example of that first factor, changes in education. American
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education changed in some big ways over the last 30 years that have the unintended consequence of
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disengaging boys. And one of those changes, one of those four components of that one factor
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is that school has become unfriendly to boys. And I'll give you a very concrete example of what I
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mean by that. If your listeners are in the Northern United States, my question is, does your school allow
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kids to throw snowballs at one another on school property during school hours? The answer is no. And
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I've found this to be almost universally the case in the United States. And that's a big change. As I said,
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I grew up in Northern Ohio, we got a lot of snow off Lake Erie, Lake effect snow. And during the winter
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months, for recess and lunch, we'd put on our coats and go outside on the playground and throw snowballs
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at each other. And the teachers would come out and join us, students against teachers. I remember Mr.
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Albers was a great shot, get you right between the eyes every time. And that's very common. You'll hear
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stories like that all across the United States and Canada. But today, if two boys go out on school
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property during school hours and start throwing snowballs at each other, it's very likely that
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teacher or administrator is going to run and say, what are you guys doing? You're not allowed to do
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that. You can't throw snowballs at each other on school property. You want to do that. You got to
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go somewhere else. And the unintended message that boys are getting is that school's not the place for
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you, that you don't belong here. We don't want your time. Boys are getting that message loud and
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clear. There's a better way, which I learned when I visited St. Andrews, the boys' school north of
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Toronto, inbounds versus out of bounds. At St. Andrews, if you want to throw snowballs, go to the
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football field. You are allowed to throw snowballs at one another on the football field, but not
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elsewhere. And that works. You create a space. Look, boys doing things that boys have always done,
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pointing fingers at one another, saying, bang, bang, you're dead, throwing snowballs at each
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other, drawing a picture of a knight decapitating another knight. Boys doing things that boys have
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always done now gets you in trouble. I can give you examples. Many examples of American schools
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were boys doing things I just described. Those boys were disciplined, suspended, threatened with
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expulsion. Medicated, like you talked about. Well, medicated is a different issue that we can
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get to. But one example I give in Boys Adrift, this fifth grade boy, one of his friends pretended to,
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it went bang and pretended to shoot him with his finger. And the other boy pretended he had a bow and
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arrow, drew back the imaginary arrow, and went twang and pretended to shoot the boy with an imaginary arrow.
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The boys were holding nothing in their hands. This was make-believe. Both boys were disciplined
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for violent behavior and threatened with suspension. Actually, I think the one boy was suspended and he
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was threatened with expulsion if he did it again. This is psychotic. It's completely detached from
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reality. And the school districts will say, well, we don't want to condone violence. You know, we are
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concerned about school violence. Look, we've got good evidence on this point. Prohibiting boys from
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pointing fingers at one another saying, bang, bang, you're dead, does nothing to prevent actual school
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violence. This is not a guess. We have good studies in which researchers have compared districts with
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so-called zero-tolerance policies, where kids are not allowed to point fingers at one another saying,
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bang, bang, you're dead, with school districts demographically similar, which do not adopt such policies,
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adopting a policy where kids are not allowed to point fingers at each other saying, bang, bang,
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you're dead, accomplishes nothing in terms of preventing actual school violence. But it does
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greatly increase the number of discipline referrals. More and more boys getting in trouble for this
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imaginary pretend sort of behavior. But it has another bad consequence, which is that when a boy gets
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in trouble for pointing his finger at another boy saying, bang, bang, you're dead, he's getting the
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message. As I said before, that school is not for you. And a lot of those boys conclude, yeah, school
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sucks. I'm going to go home and play Grand Theft Auto. That's the unintended consequence. And it's so
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easy to fix this. In two days with teachers, you can turn this around. And the boy who hated school last
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year, loves school this year, they create a snowball tournament where you pair kids off. It's voluntary,
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kids sign up. You pair kids off and you throw snowballs. Each kid gets five chances to throw a
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snowball at a target. In each pair, whoever hits the target more times advances and whoever doesn't
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sits down. And at the end of the day, you've got a grand champion. And that boy who last week said
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school sucks is now staying after school to participate in a school sponsored activity, namely the
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snowball tournament. It costs nothing. It's easy to turn this around if there's any interest. Unfortunately,
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most school districts, most administrators have no interest in this topic. Indeed, when you even
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present this, I had a teacher who went to her professor of education, she's earning a master's in
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education, and she showed the teacher my book, just showed it to her and said, I'd like to lend you my copy
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of Dr. Sachs' book, Why Gender Matters. And the subtitle is What Parents and Teachers Need to Know
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About the Emerging Science of Sex Differences. The professor looked at it, didn't touch it,
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looked at it and said, I have no interest in such sexist rubbish. For many professors of education,
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the notion that we should consider what boys need and how that might be different from what girls need
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is regarded as, as another principal said to me, he said, Dr. Sachs, after you're looking up on Google,
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I've concluded you're either an idiot, a Republican, or both. The notion that boys might need something
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different from what girls need has become politicized in this country. And if you suggest such a thing,
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people assume that you're a Republican. And before you know it, they're talking about Donald Trump.
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And I say, wait, wait, stop. This has nothing to do with Donald Trump. We're talking about evidence,
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scholarly papers. What boys need to be successful in school is different from what many girls need
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Why are these administrators and these educators who are supposed to be there for our children,
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having such a hard time recognizing this understanding, and at least considering that
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Well, unfortunately, I think politics has infiltrated the school and the district to be
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concerned about boys means for many people, they assume that you are right of center, that you are
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Republican and people who are concerned about girls, likewise are often assumed to be Democrats left of
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center. Well, I'm concerned about both. Girls are not the winners here. Girls today are much more
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likely to be anxious and depressed than girls were 20 years ago. And there is no taper in that trend
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line. About 400% more likely to be anxious or depressed compared to girls 20 years ago. I wrote a book about
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that called Girls on the Edge. So both girls and boys are losers here. Many schools that are very
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welcome to the issues of how we can help girls to be less anxious, how we can help girls to thrive in
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computer coding and physics have very little interest in how do we get boys excited about
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creative writing, expository writing, motivated to do their best in the school.
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I'm completely shocked. And I certainly see that because I've got three boys and a girl,
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and I can certainly see that for my two oldest who are in school right now. In a way, it seems like
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they're completely set up to fail, but I do want to move on because I want to try to get through as
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many of these as we can. I want to talk about this second factor, which is video games. Now I will say
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we don't even have video games in our home. We watch very little TV, but I am really interested
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because I think technology is important and understanding technology is important, but I
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think it gets taken to the extreme. You know, when I talk to parents over 40 about video games,
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some of them are thinking about Pac-Man. Sure. It's a little bit different now than it was then.
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Yeah. They haven't played Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed. They don't
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understand. This is completely different from what you grew up with. This is very realistic and the
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engineering is very good. So when you're playing Grand Theft Auto, Grand Theft Auto has one of the
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best helicopter flight simulators that exists. When you play that game, you feel like you're in a
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helicopter. Some kids will just go and play the helicopter part. You don't have to go around
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shooting people. You can just stay in the helicopter as long as you want to. It's realistic. It's
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immersive. And for many boys, it's addictive. And a lot of parents are like, you know, my son's
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playing World of Warcraft. He's got his headset on. He's collaborating with his guild members in
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the Philippines and in Liverpool, England. And the parents are awed by the technology. It's like,
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wow, you know, he's really getting tech savvy with his headset, giving commands to his guild members
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in Johannesburg, South Africa, all in real time. And the parents don't realize that the boys are
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coming to prioritize the video game over real world experience. That getting to the next mission
00:22:10.960
in Call of Duty for many of these boys is more important than getting an A instead of a B
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on their Spanish exam. They also are, the parents also are often not aware of the research showing
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that the more time a boy spends on video games, the more his social skills are undermined. Learning
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how to talk face to face with a human being, how to listen, how to use tone of voice as a clue to
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meaning. None of those skills are innate. They have to be learned and they're learned by practice
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and they're maintained by practice. And the more time a boy is spending on video games,
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the less well he develops these social skills. Yeah. It's amazing to me how infrequently that I see
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boys in the neighborhood, for example, that they're even outside playing. You know, my boys,
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I kick them outside. I remember when I was little, my mom would literally lock the screen door to our house
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and I would go out first thing in the morning on Saturday. And I didn't come back in until my mom
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yelled for us for dinner and everybody started going home because it was dinner time. But you
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just don't see boys out in the neighborhood playing anymore because they're trapped inside on,
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on devices and electronics, video games, TV. And I can definitely see that being a real problem.
00:23:25.280
Well, and this is why it has to be the parent's job to limit, govern and guide what video games your
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kid is playing and for how long. And in the book, I provide very specific guidelines, no more than 40
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minutes a night on school nights, no more than an hour a day on weekends. And your minutes do not
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roll over. So if you go three weeks without playing a video game, that doesn't mean you're allowed to
00:23:46.440
spend seven hours on a Saturday playing a video game. This has to be the parent's call because when
00:23:52.060
he's online and the boys now very often are playing online with friends, it's very hard for a 12 year old
00:23:58.340
boy to say, well, I'm going to sign off now because research suggests that spending too much time on
00:24:03.320
video games may undermine social skills. Come on, that's ridiculous. No 12 year old is going to say
00:24:07.960
that. You have to be able to say, hey, my parents have installed this app on my console. It's going
00:24:13.020
to lock me out in two minutes and I won't be able to log back on for 24 hours. You have to be willing to
00:24:19.720
be the mean parent. You have to be willing to take the blame when your son says to his friends,
00:24:25.220
well, I'd like to play for the next four hours, but my parents won't let me. That's your job as a
00:24:31.000
parent. It's amazing how much power I think generally in society we give our children. I
00:24:35.000
think that's the premise of your book, The Collapse of Parenting is that we're more interested and
00:24:38.760
concerned with being friends and being liked than being the structure and the discipline that kids
00:24:45.780
need. I mean, they don't know what to do and it's our job to help foster healthy parameters and
00:24:51.580
guidelines for our kids. That's right. And the culture has changed in a way that undermines the
00:24:57.480
authority of parents. I mean, you look at the most popular TV shows for kids 50 years ago, shows like
00:25:03.640
Father Knows Best, My Three Sons, The Andrew Griffith Show. Those shows were teaching kids that your
00:25:09.680
parents know best, that your parents have the right and the duty to limit, govern and guide what you're
00:25:17.680
doing. But the most popular shows for kids today, whether it's American Idol or iCarly, The Voice or
00:25:25.800
Survivor, those shows, either parents are absent or parents are projected as clueless, out of touch.
00:25:33.540
Shows like Modern Family, even on the Disney Channel, Jesse, Dog with a Blog, Liv and Maddie,
00:25:40.160
those parents are out of touch and clueless about what kids...
00:25:47.660
What we're talking about today with Dr. Leonard Sachs is such an important issue,
00:25:51.960
so much so that I have decided to throw my hat in the ring with what I think has the potential to
00:25:57.780
become the next evolution or a next component of the Order of Man experience. It's called Legacy.
00:26:04.140
All right. This is a three and a half day father and son retreat in the mountains of Southern Utah.
00:26:08.760
I just released the dates last week and we've already sold out a third of our slots for this event.
00:26:13.280
The dates are September 20th through the 23rd, 2018, and we only have 14 spots remaining.
00:26:20.240
This is only the second time I've really announced it. Over the course of three days,
00:26:24.280
you and your son are going to develop more skills and forge new bonds between yourself,
00:26:30.440
create the framework for success and growth as men, and in a way, create your own rite of passage.
00:26:35.920
I've talked about this in previous episodes of the podcast, and I get so many questions about
00:26:40.240
creating a rite of passage. And we want to be able to help give you the tools and the assistance that
00:26:44.880
you need, not only to do it here, but then to go out and do it in your life. Now, guys, the age range
00:26:50.020
for the boys is between the ages of eight to 15. Again, it's for ages eight to 15 with your son.
00:26:56.020
So if you have a son, whether that's a biological son or an adopted son or a stepson, maybe it's a
00:27:01.860
nephew, maybe there's a neighborhood boy that you have a fatherly role in the life of that young
00:27:07.500
man, then please join us in this life-changing experience for you. And also for him that I think
00:27:13.860
will set the course for the rest of his life. If you are interested in learning more about the event
00:27:18.640
and the activities and how this will work, and you want to lock in one of your seats, head to
00:27:23.340
order of man.com slash legacy. Again, it's order of man.com slash legacy. Now, with that said,
00:27:30.140
let's get back to this conversation with Dr. Leonard Sachs. Well, let's, for the sake of time,
00:27:35.260
move on to this third factor, which is medications for ADHD and those types of things. What do you see
00:27:41.820
here? What's the research and the trend showing? Okay. So let's talk about the trends. In 1979,
00:27:47.420
about 1% of American kids were diagnosed and treated for attention deficit disorder. According to the
00:27:53.860
Centers for Disease Control, the most recent data, 20% of American boys, one in five, now been
00:27:59.720
diagnosed and treated for ADD. And I compare the numbers across countries. An American kid is now
00:28:07.380
14 times more likely to be on medication for ADD compared to a kid in the United Kingdom. I wrote a
00:28:14.860
book for a French publisher on girls and boys in France, working with French colleagues. And working
00:28:21.280
with French colleagues, I learned that in all of France, there's fewer than 6,000 kids on medications
00:28:26.700
for ADD. I just came from speaking near San Francisco. I can tell you there's more kids in
00:28:32.420
San Francisco alone on medication for ADD than there are in all of France, a nation of 65 million
00:28:38.880
people. Why did this happen? And why did it happen here and not elsewhere? Well, it happened because
00:28:45.540
medication became the first resort in this country and not elsewhere. It's very common for an American
00:28:51.160
physician to say, well, let's try Adderall. Let's try Vyvanse and see if it helps. I spoke at Harvard
00:28:58.120
on a conference on learning and the brain. And I would love to tell you my presentation was the buzz
00:29:02.740
of the conference, but it wasn't. The presentation everybody really got excited about was a presentation
00:29:07.600
by Dr. John Gabrielli. Dr. Gabrielli somehow got permission to give Adderall, a very popular medication
00:29:15.180
for ADD to give Adderall to normal kids and withhold medication from kids who truly had severe ADD.
00:29:23.100
And then he studied the ability of kids in both groups to learn on and off medication. And he found
00:29:28.840
that medication helps kids who don't have ADD, helps normal kids as much or more than it helps kids who
00:29:36.640
have ADD. That's a really important finding because so many times parents will say, well, you know,
00:29:42.920
the Vyvanse has been so helpful. Dr. Sachs, how can you say my son doesn't have ADD? The Vyvanse really helped.
00:29:51.100
The parents are using the response to medication as though it had some diagnostic significance.
00:29:57.700
Vyvanse was prescribed for my son for ADD. It's been immensely helpful. Therefore, my kid must have ADD, right?
00:30:05.300
Bzzzt. Wrong. Dr. Gabrielli's research and other studies like it show these medications are not specific.
00:30:11.280
They help normal kids as much or more than they help kids with ADD. These medications help everybody.
00:30:17.880
Why not, you know, why not just put everybody in medication? So I saw this. A parent's brought a boy
00:30:23.020
to me. A child psychiatrist had diagnosed him as having ADD. It was off the chart on the Conner scale,
00:30:28.580
inattentive in all classes. But they brought him to me because now he's on Vyvanse. He's getting
00:30:34.120
palpitations. He's got a tremor. He's anxious. And they feel correctly that this is due to the
00:30:40.480
medication. So they saw something I wrote for the New York Times about how these medications are
00:30:44.440
overprescribed. And so they brought him to me for a second opinion. So I did a careful sleep history.
00:30:49.720
I said, when do you go to bed? When do you wake up? And before the son could answer, mom said, well,
00:30:55.000
he's in his bedroom by nine o'clock. He, we wake him up at six in the morning. So that's nine hours.
00:30:59.440
I said, all right, you have a video game console in your bedroom. And the boy's very friendly and
00:31:06.500
forthcoming. Yeah, he's got a video game console. Yeah, he plays it. Yeah, he's up till 1 a.m.,
00:31:12.700
two in the morning, typically playing Assassin's Creed, Fortnite. And he's getting three, four hours
00:31:19.800
of sleep a night. He is sleep deprived. Sleep deprivation perfectly mimics ADHD of the inattentive
00:31:26.740
variety. There is no observation, no counter scale that can distinguish the kid who's not
00:31:32.340
paying attention because he's sleep deprived from the kid who's not paying attention because he has
00:31:36.340
ADHD. And the medication was tremendously helpful. Why? What's Vyvanse? What's Adderall? They're
00:31:42.980
amphetamines. They're very powerful stimulants. They compensate for the sleep deprivation. If you've
00:31:49.380
got four hours of sleep a night, but you take 30 milligrams of Adderall, you're good to go.
00:31:53.280
But the appropriate remedy, the appropriate remedy for sleep deprivation is sleep, not scheduled to
00:32:00.700
amphetamines. And I said to the parents, get the console out of the bedroom. No devices in the
00:32:08.580
bedroom. Incidentally, that's not just my opinion. That's the official guideline of the American Academy
00:32:13.300
of Pediatrics. No child under 18 should have a video game console in the bedroom or a smartphone in
00:32:20.020
the bedroom because they're going to be playing games on them at two in the morning. So no screens
00:32:26.280
in the bedroom. Now, as again, those are the official guidelines of the American Academy of
00:32:29.780
Pediatrics. And this boy did fine. He got his sleep. He doesn't need medication. He needs parents
00:32:40.440
It's really interesting. You bring this up and it really comes back to this other book that you've
00:32:44.440
written, The Collapse of Parenting. And I think just for the sake of time, we'll have to have maybe a
00:32:48.040
secondary and a follow-up conversation because I think it is very easy and we'll use the word
00:32:53.680
convenient. I think that's probably the best word to prescribe medication or to try to put band-aids
00:32:59.340
on the symptoms when the real problem is, like you say, a collapse of parenting and a collapse of
00:33:05.580
involvement in the family. From my perspective, is that accurate?
00:33:09.740
Yes. But if we're focusing on boys and motivation, we need to tie this up. Why are stimulant
00:33:15.200
medications a problem as far as boys and medication and motivation? The problem is that
00:33:20.620
stimulant medications, Adderall, Vyvanse, Concerta, Medidate, Focalendit, Trana, Ritalin,
00:33:27.500
turns out they damage the motivational center of the brain, the nucleus accumbens. And I now cite 15
00:33:34.200
different scholarly studies in which this has been demonstrated in humans and laboratory animals.
00:33:39.840
the damage the motivational center of the brain. This nucleus accumbens has nothing to do with
00:33:46.320
learning or memory. These kids can learn fine. They can remember fine. It has nothing to do with
00:33:51.540
affect. These kids are smiling and happy, but they're not motivated. So I'll give you one quick
00:33:58.600
example from my own practice. A mom is getting very frustrated with her son and she confronts him
00:34:04.540
one day and says, you know, what's your problem? You roll out of bed late every morning. You work a few
00:34:08.520
hours a week at the coffee shop. You're 28 years old. You don't have a career. You don't even have a
00:34:15.840
girlfriend. And he laughed. He said, well, I used to have a girlfriend. Then she found out I only work
00:34:21.900
a few hours a week at Starbucks. She dumped me. Mom is pulling her hair out. Son's totally fine. He's
00:34:27.780
happy. She insisted he come see me. He was okay with that. And he made some very negative comments
00:34:33.360
about this young woman who had dumped him. He said, she was fat and she wanted me to take her
00:34:38.240
places and do stuff. He said, 1995 a month. I said, wait, what do you mean 1995 a month? I don't
00:34:44.540
understand. And he mentioned a porn site, a pornography site. He said, yeah. And the girls
00:34:51.100
are way prettier. I said, wait, those, those aren't girls. Those are pictures on a computer screen.
00:34:56.240
And they're pixels. Wouldn't you rather be intimate with an actual woman? And he said, no. Look for many
00:35:03.780
of these boys, the pornography is so good. The video games are so good. They would rather spend
00:35:11.460
their free time in their bedroom with the door closed than venturing out into the real world,
00:35:17.980
which costs more money and where the risks of rejection are much higher. That's the end result.
00:35:24.940
This boy was on Ritalin and other stimulant medications for ADD from age nine to age 17
00:35:31.580
prescribed by other doctors. That's the end result. He's funny. He's friendly. He's good looking,
00:35:36.800
but he is completely unmotivated. Interesting. Does this tie in then to that fourth factor of
00:35:43.340
endocrine disruptors where it's medication or these other chemicals, things that we're putting into our
00:35:49.440
bodies? The five factors are logically not connected, but they've come together in a perfect
00:35:56.860
storm because they all have the net result of disengaging boys from the real world. The fourth
00:36:03.080
factor is completely separate. The fourth factor is endocrine disruptors, water in a plastic bottle.
00:36:08.880
That plastic is made from polyethylene terephthalate, PET. That bottle was shipped in a truck. Even when it's
00:36:16.300
cold outside as it is today, that truck was sitting in the sun and the temperature inside the truck can
00:36:22.080
easily rise above 110 degrees Fahrenheit. When that happens, chemicals in the plastic, specifically
00:36:29.140
diethylhexyl phthalate and antimony will leak into the water and those chemicals act in the human body
00:36:36.300
like female hormones. Then it's not just bottled water. It's soda. It's condiments like ketchup,
00:36:43.520
vinegar, pasta sauce, foods and beverages that we consume are now filled with these endocrine
00:36:51.400
disruptors that mimic the action of female hormones. Now what happens when a child drinks bottled water
00:36:57.140
or consumes ketchup or pasta sauce from a container that is a plastic bottle? Well, the answer varies
00:37:05.760
depending whether you're talking about girls or boys. If you're talking about girls, the result is an
00:37:09.860
earlier age of onset of puberty and a higher risk of anxiety and depression. If you're talking about
00:37:17.960
boys, the result is a drop in testosterone levels. In the United States, there's been a continuous drop
00:37:23.920
in testosterone levels over the past 60 years. Testosterone levels in the United States for young
00:37:29.600
men have dropped by about half over the last 60 years. Of course, that affects fertility. Just five
00:37:35.620
months ago, a study was published showing that the average total sperm count of a young man has dropped
00:37:43.720
by more than half since 1971. We're seeing a dramatic plummeting decline in testosterone levels and sperm
00:37:53.800
counts across the United States and indeed across the developed world. It is not at all true in
00:38:00.020
sub-Saharan Africa where people are not drinking water out of plastic bottles. This phenomenon is
00:38:05.360
confined to people in developed countries. Why is it a problem and why does it affect motivation
00:38:11.980
in boys but not in girls? Well, again, I cite many studies in which researchers have studied young men
00:38:19.060
who are driven and hardworking and compared them to men who are less motivated, lazier. And they find
00:38:25.960
consistently that the driven, hardworking man has higher testosterone level than the lazy, less
00:38:32.420
motivated man. But this is not at all true for girls and women. That driven, hardworking woman does
00:38:38.540
not have a higher testosterone level than the less motivated, lazier woman. Women do not rely on
00:38:45.400
testosterone for drive and motivation, but men do. And when testosterone levels drop, drive and
00:38:53.380
motivation drops. And you know, some of the factors we talked about are not easy to fix. You cannot
00:38:58.020
change your child's school. But this factor turns out to be real easy to fix. Don't buy anything that
00:39:06.760
was shipped in a plastic bottle. Don't carry bottled water with you or allow your son to. Pour tap water
00:39:14.560
into a steel canteen, as we do in our home. Don't microwave anything in a plastic bag. Use
00:39:23.200
metal or ceramic, excuse me, not metal. Use ceramic or- That could get interesting really
00:39:28.080
quick. Metal. Metal would be pretty interesting in a microwave, but you can carry it in metal,
00:39:34.160
but microwave in a glass of ceramic container. And when you do this within a few weeks, hormone
00:39:40.800
levels normalize. So the fourth factor, not well known among Americans, but actually a real easy one
00:39:47.620
to fix. Interesting. Yeah. Sounds like a quick fix. Let's move into this fifth factor. That
00:39:53.100
one's actually really interesting to me, which is the revenge of the forsaken gods. I'm really
00:39:57.560
curious. What do you have to say on this? Yeah. So that title came from a conversation I had with
00:40:02.900
one of my patients, Anders Ekloff, who's an amateur anthropologist. And he and I were talking,
00:40:08.060
we both, you know, read about sub-Saharan Africa and South Pacific Islanders. In those cultures,
00:40:15.260
boys do not become men as a matter of mere maturation. For that boy to be recognized as a
00:40:22.880
man and to earn the privileges and prerogatives of an adult man, he must earn that right. And that
00:40:32.620
transition is not automatic. And the parents will often make sacrifices to the relevant gods
00:40:38.880
to propitiate the gods, to improve the odds that their son will make that transition into manhood.
00:40:46.300
And as my patient was pointing out, we don't pay any attention to that. And the result that we're
00:40:52.160
observing is, he said, the revenge of the forsaken gods. And I like that phrase so much, I used it as
00:40:57.960
the title for that chapter. But what that title means in more accessible terms is the decline and
00:41:04.020
disintegration in our cultural construction of masculinity. So again, you look at the most
00:41:10.660
popular shows and movies from 50 years ago, movies starring men like Gary Cooper, Paul Newman, Sidney
00:41:17.860
Poitier. Those movies, those shows taught boys that being a real man means being courageous, being
00:41:27.360
knowledgeable, being honest, being thoughtful, being kind, being productive. Fast forward to today,
00:41:34.000
I've reviewed the 150 most popular television shows in writing my book, The Collapse of Parenting.
00:41:40.620
Not one of them consistently or even often portrays a father as knowledgeable, competent,
00:41:48.560
caring, productive. On the contrary, what's much more common in this country is Homer Simpson,
00:41:54.400
who's a bum and idiot. In one episode, we get to see his brain. His brain has three major drives,
00:42:00.360
sleep, donuts, and beer. Modern family, the straight dad is consistently an idiot. And his stupid antics
00:42:08.600
are the butt of the joke. His children, especially his oldest daughter, are consistently wiser and more
00:42:15.440
insightful than the father is. The idiot, out of touch, clueless dad has become a staple of American
00:42:23.140
comedy. And the knowledgeable, courageous, productive father is now unknown. And this has
00:42:31.240
consequences. I'm not just talking about the media incident. There's lots more evidence that
00:42:36.740
boys had no idea what it means to be a man. They have to be taught, and we no longer teach them.
00:42:44.740
And so they look to the marketplace. And the marketplace has changed. You know, 1964,
00:42:51.140
the Beatles had a number one hit song, I Want to Hold Your Hand. Oh, please say to me,
00:42:56.100
you'll let me be your man. And please say to me, you'll let me hold your hand. That was a number
00:43:00.860
one song in this country. More recently, Akon had a number one hit song, I Want to F You. Okay,
00:43:07.300
I'm not going to say the word on the air, but he says it. It was a number one song in this country.
00:43:12.200
He's addressing five strippers who, and he says, I see you winding and grinding around that pole.
00:43:19.420
I see you looking at me and you already know I want to F you. And he talks about, I'm going to
00:43:24.560
take you to the motel wholesale. He clearly is offering money for sex. Bruno Mars, January 28th,
00:43:31.960
2018, won six Grammys, more than any other artist, all of which were based on his album 24,
00:43:39.880
most of which were based on one song from that album. That's what I like. He's speaking to a
00:43:45.280
young woman he barely knows. And he says to her, you baby girl, you and your ass invited,
00:43:52.300
turn around and drop it for a player, pop it for a player. He's offering money for anal sex because
00:43:58.200
that's what I like. That's the title of the song. And this is the best song of the year,
00:44:04.460
in the opinion of the recording Academy. You know, imagine a young man at work going up to another
00:44:10.440
co-worker, a young woman and saying, Hey, a baby girl, you and your ass invited. I'll give you
00:44:17.740
diamonds and money for anal sex, which is exactly what happens in the song. Well, that, that young
00:44:22.800
man would be disciplined. He would, he would taught that addressing a girl as you and your ass
00:44:28.420
is objectification and that it's never acceptable to offer a coworker money for sex. And yet a song
00:44:36.380
in which that happens is celebrated as the best we have to offer. That's the culture in which young
00:44:43.160
men are growing up. And how are they supposed to know if they have received no instruction?
00:44:50.040
They are adrift in a culture that is teaching them that this is what real men do. This is what's
00:44:57.840
cool. I don't think we can have this conversation without addressing some of the situations, for
00:45:04.440
example, in Florida and active school shootings. We actually had a situation here just in the last
00:45:09.120
couple of days with a young man who brought a bomb that he made in his, in his home to a school.
00:45:16.000
Fortunately, it didn't, it didn't detonate. Is this a symptom of the five factors that we're
00:45:22.140
addressing today? Yeah, I think that this all ties together in every culture. Boys want to know
00:45:30.040
what does it mean to be a man? And we no longer give them any consistent or meaningful instruction.
00:45:36.120
And as a result, many boys now construct masculinity negatively. In other words, being a real man means
00:45:42.760
not doing what girls do. If girls care about working hard and pleasing the teacher, then I don't. If
00:45:48.340
girls want to be kind, then I'm going to be mean. What does it mean to be a real man? Well, it means
00:45:54.480
racing my car 140 miles an hour on a city street, getting totally wasted, taking whatever girl I want
00:46:01.420
without asking. And for some boys, it may mean getting a weapon and firing that weapon, because then
00:46:08.720
they'll all see I'm a real man. Hmm. So on that note, then Dr. Sachs, what, what is your definition?
00:46:16.480
What does it mean to be a man? Well, you know, I meet with middle school and high school boys,
00:46:22.060
and we talk about this and the definition I guide them towards is a definition I've learned from a
00:46:28.500
number of boy schools that I've visited. And that is being a real man means using your strength in the
00:46:35.800
service of others. Being a real man means using your strength in the service of others. That works
00:46:42.000
pretty well as a definition. And it's certainly a great place to start the conversation with boys and
00:46:48.580
young men. I wholeheartedly agree. I really, really appreciate that response. And certainly
00:46:52.800
something I subscribe to as well and try to instill in my boys. This has been a really fascinating
00:46:57.180
discussion. Obviously, we could talk so much more about it. And sounds like we may need to have a
00:47:00.700
follow up conversation. But for now, I'd like for you to share with us how we connect with you,
00:47:05.260
learn more about your work, and then of course, pick up copies of your books.
00:47:08.800
Well, if you go to my website, Leonard Sachs, L-E-O-N-A-R-D-S-A-X, leonardsachs.com,
00:47:14.480
and just click on contact me. I try to answer every email I get. Give me a couple of days
00:47:18.940
sometimes, but I will try to get back to you. Right on. We'll make sure we link all that up
00:47:23.140
and connect the guys with what you're doing. And I can tell you, I've read your books. My wife and I
00:47:27.120
have both read those. They've helped us when it comes to parenting and understanding what's going on
00:47:31.700
specifically with our boys and our daughter as well. So I want to let you know, I appreciate
00:47:36.160
you. I appreciate your work. And really, I'm grateful that you spent some time with us today.
00:47:40.220
Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for inviting me.
00:47:43.700
Gentlemen, there it is, my conversation with Dr. Sachs. I know this was very, very powerful for me.
00:47:49.280
I've been trying to schedule a conversation with him for some time now. And I was so honored to be
00:47:53.340
able to get on the phone with him and have this conversation in a society that frankly just needs
00:47:57.540
to have it. There's big announcements with the Boy Scouts dropping the name boy from their title.
00:48:03.700
And of course, that's probably going to be changing some things. Again, masculinity needs to be defended.
00:48:09.480
It's being dismissed. And I think we're doing a huge, huge injustice to our boys, which there will
00:48:16.320
come a point in time where we ask them to lead us. And if we don't adequately prepare them for that
00:48:22.800
responsibility, we're going to be in a world of hurt. And I think we begin to experience
00:48:28.180
some, just some of the problems that we will continue to experience as we neglect our boys
00:48:35.880
and we forget to take care of them the way they need to be taken care of. One symptom I can see
00:48:40.440
from this is active shooter type situations. A lot of these kids, they don't have father figures
00:48:46.540
in their home and they've never learned what it means to be a man. And so it's automatically dubbed
00:48:50.880
toxic masculinity when it's not masculinity at all. It's something that hasn't been developed
00:48:56.980
and shown through other men. So we have this responsibility, this obligation to help these
00:49:00.580
young boys. And of course, Dr. Sachs is doing great work. And then we've got our legacy event,
00:49:05.460
which is our first experience, if you will, in dipping our toe into the water of helping fathers
00:49:12.780
be able to go out into their families and their communities and raise boys the way we know
00:49:17.740
they need to be raised. So guys, make sure you connect with me, make sure you connect with Dr.
00:49:22.560
Sachs. If you want to learn more about our legacy event, order of man.com slash legacy,
00:49:28.160
drop me a line, drop Dr. Sachs a line. Let us know on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, wherever you
00:49:32.860
are, what you thought about the show, what your biggest takeaway was. Love hearing from you guys.
00:49:37.080
And of course, please, please share this episode. All right. Write an email or a text or have a
00:49:43.360
conversation face-to-face with somebody, whatever you can do to spread the mission of masculinity.
00:49:48.240
And of course, helping us raise our boys, right? The world needs it more than ever. So guys,
00:49:53.600
I will sign out with that again, order of man.com slash legacy or for our event, share this episode.
00:49:58.880
Want to thank you for being here. Make sure you continue to subscribe, share the show. You're not
00:50:04.120
going to want to miss some of the shows that we have coming up until next week, guys, take action
00:50:07.900
and become the man you are meant to be. Thank you for listening to the order of man podcast.
00:50:13.980
You're ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be.
00:50:18.000
We invite you to join the order at order of man.com.