The Art of Manliness - #136： Boys Adrift With Dr. Leonard Sax

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:18.420 So I'd say in the past 10 years or so, there's been this uptick in the number of articles

00:00:21.840 you see in magazines, websites, newspapers, even there's even books written on this topic.

00:00:26.940 And the topic is the fact that young men in America and in other Western countries are

00:00:31.520 floundering.

00:00:32.120 They're not doing too great.

00:00:33.320 Fewer young men in America are going to college.

00:00:35.160 Those that do go to college, fewer of them are graduating from college, fewer earning

00:00:38.940 advanced degrees.

00:00:40.360 The earning prospects of men have been declining for the past 20 or 30 years.

00:00:45.160 All the while, more women have been going to college, graduating college, earning advanced 1.00

00:00:50.000 degrees, and their earnings have been going up.

00:00:52.140 What's going on here?

00:00:53.060 There's been lots of theories put out there why that is.

00:00:55.780 Well, my guest today on the podcast has spent his career studying the sex differences between

00:01:01.800 boys and girls and how this can affect their flourishing in the development in adolescence

00:01:06.520 and into young adulthood.

00:01:08.060 His name is Dr. Leonard Sachs.

00:01:10.120 He is the author of several books.

00:01:12.320 His first was Why Gender Matters. 1.00

00:01:14.240 Second, which we'll be talking a lot about today, is called Boys Adrift, where he takes

00:01:18.600 on and proposes his ideas and backed by research on why boys are struggling in today's modern

00:01:25.460 economy.

00:01:25.960 And not just the economy, just in their personal lives as well.

00:01:29.280 And then his third is Girls on Edge, where he discusses the challenges that girls face

00:01:34.120 culturally, educationally, and in the broader economy.

00:01:38.160 And instead of just showing theories and research on why this is happening, what I love about

00:01:43.780 Dr. Sachs is he proposes some solutions on what parents, teachers, mentors, policymakers

00:01:49.600 can do to create an environment that can allow both boys and girls to flourish.

00:01:55.760 Really great podcast today.

00:01:57.040 If you are a parent, if you are a teacher, a mentor, you're going to get a lot out of this,

00:02:01.540 and you're probably going to want to go out and buy these books and check them out.

00:02:04.320 So without further ado, we're going to talk to Dr. Leonard Sachs about why gender matters

00:02:10.180 and the development of our young boys and girls.

00:02:20.960 Dr. Leonard Sachs, welcome to the show.

00:02:23.340 Thank you.

00:02:23.980 All right.

00:02:24.280 So you have spent your career researching and investigating how sex differences between boys

00:02:29.700 and girls can affect their intellectual and emotional development and have been an advocate

00:02:33.200 to make policy changes to take the new research about sex differences into account.

00:02:40.300 And in fact, one of your books is called Why Gender Matters.

00:02:43.900 And a popular idea out there is that gender really doesn't matter that much. 0.86

00:02:48.100 Yes, there could be some differences, but any differences that exist are negligible.

00:02:52.860 Why does gender matter in the intellectual and emotional development of our children? 1.00

00:02:56.800 Well, you certainly have described the political consensus, which is that gender doesn't matter, 0.96

00:03:05.720 that gender is a social construct, and that anyone who says otherwise is either an idiot,

00:03:11.580 a Republican, or both.

00:03:14.240 But that's actually not the reality, and it's not what the data show.

00:03:18.180 So, for example, give a blank piece of paper and a box of crayons to a child, four, five, six years of age.

00:03:29.700 I cite studies in which researchers did exactly that in the United States, another study in England,

00:03:37.180 another in South Africa, another in Japan, another in Thailand.

00:03:42.480 And in each study, researchers gave young children a blank piece of paper and a box of crayons

00:03:48.520 and asked them to draw whatever they want.

00:03:51.160 Girls everywhere draw people, pets, flowers, and trees,

00:03:54.940 usually two, three, or four standing on a horizontal ground.

00:03:58.960 The people have eyes, mouth, hair, and clothes.

00:04:02.020 The girls use ten or more crayons, with the predominance of red, orange, yellow, green, daisy, and brown.

00:04:06.120 Most boys, not all, but most boys, do something quite different.

00:04:12.140 Most boys are trying to draw a scene of action at a moment of dynamic change,

00:04:16.320 like a monster eating an alien or a rocket smashing into a planet.

00:04:22.640 Human figures, if present, are often stick figures, lacking eyes, mouth, hair, and clothes.

00:04:29.760 The boys use six or fewer crayons, with the predominance of black, gray, silver, and blue.

00:04:36.720 I have personally been in the classroom.

00:04:40.020 When the teacher has given a piece of paper and a box of crayons

00:04:44.220 to all the girls and boys in her classroom,

00:04:47.240 and she is praising and commending Emily and Melissa and Sonia and Vanessa

00:04:53.940 for their pictures of people, pets, flowers, and trees.

00:04:58.400 But then she comes to Jacob's picture.

00:05:02.780 Jacob's trying to draw a car crash at the moment of impact.

00:05:06.120 Where one car is being crushed between two others.

00:05:09.520 And she says, no, Jacob, you know, a car crash.

00:05:12.180 That's so violent, you know, and people are going to get hurt or injured.

00:05:16.140 And, Jacob, I actually don't see any people at all in your drawing.

00:05:20.580 I can only see cars.

00:05:21.840 Now, look at what Emily drew.

00:05:24.240 And Emily had drawn a picture of a girl with a little puppy

00:05:27.580 and another girl playing with a puppy.

00:05:30.480 You know, why can't you draw something more like Emily?

00:05:33.560 There's one thing that kids are equally good at, girls and boys, at every age,

00:05:38.320 and that's figuring out what the grown-up's like.

00:05:40.680 And it doesn't take the boys very long to figure out they're doing it wrong.

00:05:44.700 I have visited now more than 380 schools across the United States and around the world.

00:05:50.180 And I was in a second-grade classroom in the United States where teachers have free time.

00:05:54.660 You can do whatever you want.

00:05:56.480 And some of the girls were sitting and coloring.

00:05:58.740 And one of the boys was running around the room making a buzzing noise.

00:06:02.140 And I stopped him.

00:06:03.980 And I said, how come you don't want to sit and draw?

00:06:06.880 And he said, without hesitation, he said, drawing's for girls.

00:06:10.880 Drawing is for girls.

00:06:12.180 Where did he get that notion?

00:06:13.580 I'm sure the teacher never said drawing is for girls, but she might as well have. 0.99

00:06:18.340 She's unintentionally sending the message that drawing is for girls.

00:06:22.420 The lack of awareness of gender differences has the unintended consequence of reinforcing gender stereotypes.

00:06:29.720 And when you look at who's taking AP art history,

00:06:32.020 in the United States, at high school,

00:06:35.260 you find that girls greatly outnumber boys, which is ironic,

00:06:38.560 because most of the artists they're studying are men.

00:06:41.940 But it works both ways.

00:06:43.840 Ignoring gender differences, pretending that gender doesn't matter,

00:06:47.180 disadvantages girls as well. 1.00

00:06:49.720 In 1987, 66% of high school students taking AP computer science were boys.

00:06:56.700 34% were girls.

00:06:57.860 Last year, only 19% of high school students taking AP computer science were girls.

00:07:06.020 We've gone from 34% in 1987, dropped to 19%.

00:07:10.100 Ignoring gender does not eliminate gender stereotypes.

00:07:14.440 It reinforces gender stereotypes.

00:07:16.600 You end up with what we have in this country, which is girls who think computer science is for boys and boys who think drawing is for girls. 0.92

00:07:23.880 If you do it differently, then you can break down the gender stereotypes.

00:07:28.880 And I can tell you about a superintendent of 17 elementary schools who insisted that all her teachers learn these strategies.

00:07:36.580 And she told us at the conference I hosted in Houston that at each of those 17 elementary schools,

00:07:42.580 when you say to students, free time, you can do whatever you want,

00:07:46.040 the boys' favorite activity now is drawing.

00:07:49.760 Boys love to draw.

00:07:51.080 Girls love to draw. 1.00

00:07:52.360 I don't think there's any innate difference in how much kids love to draw.

00:07:55.440 But there's a big difference in what boys want to draw compared to what girls want to draw. 0.54

00:08:02.480 And if you don't understand those differences and pretend that they don't exist,

00:08:06.020 you end up reinforcing gender stereotypes, as we have done in this country.

00:08:10.480 Fascinating.

00:08:11.260 So I imagine testosterone is the big cause of the difference of why boys are more action-oriented.

00:08:16.720 Testosterone has nothing to do with the difference.

00:08:19.580 There is no sex difference in testosterone levels among 4, 5, 6, 7 years old children.

00:08:27.240 Children at that age make very little testosterone,

00:08:30.400 and there is no sex difference between the amount of testosterone in a 5-year-old boy compared with a 5-year-old girl.

00:08:36.580 So why is the difference, though, there?

00:08:39.660 The sex differences are not related to hormones.

00:08:43.060 They are genetically programmed, and they are found across species.

00:08:45.980 So, for example, the sex differences that I talk about are just as evident in chimpanzees and monkeys as they are in our species.

00:08:55.400 Further evidence that these differences are not socially constructed.

00:09:00.680 Fascinating.

00:09:01.380 So you've hit on a little bit about how teachers may inadvertently give the message to boys

00:09:08.440 that the way they approach learning or what they do is not good.

00:09:12.440 How else have American schools changed in the past 30 years that have put boys at a disadvantage?

00:09:19.960 Indeed.

00:09:20.580 That's a major focus of my book, Boys Adrift.

00:09:23.940 So I recently visited a high school in this country, in the United States,

00:09:29.720 and parents were telling me about their son.

00:09:33.680 High school, English, 10th grade.

00:09:36.160 The assignment was to write a story about anything you like.

00:09:39.540 And this boy chose to write a story about the Battle of Stalingrad, winter of 1942,

00:09:46.880 from the perspective of a Russian soldier.

00:09:49.560 And he researched it at considerable length and described the Russian soldier patrolling a street

00:09:55.740 when he was ambushed by a German soldier.

00:09:58.740 And the Russian soldier fires his rifle at point-blank range into the face of the German soldier

00:10:05.220 and then describes what happens when you fire a military rifle at point-blank range in another man's face.

00:10:13.560 What happens is that the head explodes.

00:10:15.760 And a piece of eyeball goes this way, a piece of chin goes that way, 0.96

00:10:18.960 some brain matter goes this way.

00:10:20.440 This boy was suspended from school, and the parents were told he could not return.

00:10:26.620 And so the parents secured at their own expense a professional evaluation

00:10:30.600 and a letter from the professional assuring the school and the district

00:10:35.520 that the boy posed no imminent danger to himself or to others.

00:10:39.040 And when the parents shared that story with me, it really struck a chord

00:10:43.080 because I attended public schools in Ohio, K-12.

00:10:48.500 And in 1977, our lead teacher for English at our high school

00:10:52.820 invited me and three other students to sit for a competition

00:10:57.280 administered by the National Council of Teachers of English.

00:11:00.600 And we were shown into a room, and the proctor gave us each a blue book and said,

00:11:04.000 you have 45 minutes, write a story.

00:11:07.320 I chose to write a story about East German refugees escaping to West Germany.

00:11:12.500 When I share this story with high school students today,

00:11:15.480 I have to explain to them that Germany used to be divided in two,

00:11:18.840 and East Germans weren't allowed to go to West Germany,

00:11:21.960 which is news to quite a few of them.

00:11:23.340 But anyhow, I imagined East German refugees trying to escape to West Germany

00:11:27.000 crossing a minefield in the middle of the night.

00:11:29.040 And one of them steps on a mine, which blows off his left leg to the knee

00:11:34.320 and his right leg to the hip, so he now has no feet.

00:11:37.940 He's crawling west, blood pouring out from the stumps where his legs used to be.

00:11:43.240 The East German guards, of course, have heard the noise

00:11:45.820 and have turned their flood lamps to try to find him on the ground

00:11:53.540 and are shooting at him, but missing, I described the bullets popping up,

00:11:58.440 little clouds of dust around him.

00:12:00.420 And West German guards are calling out encouragement to him.

00:12:03.060 Of course, they're not allowed to go out into the minefield.

00:12:06.900 And he's crawling west, and the bullets are going on either side of him

00:12:11.300 and blood pouring out.

00:12:13.180 And finally, he reaches the border, and the West German guards pick him up

00:12:17.860 to take him to hospital, and at that moment, he dies.

00:12:21.600 The end.

00:12:22.180 My own mom died in September 2008, and going through her papers after her death,

00:12:29.780 I found that she had kept the certificate sent to our home address

00:12:33.460 by the National Council of Teachers of English,

00:12:35.920 awarding me their highest honor in creative writing.

00:12:39.500 Boys doing things that boys have always done,

00:12:42.640 writing stories about traumatic amputation, violent death,

00:12:46.220 drawing pictures of soldiers attacking each other with knives,

00:12:49.620 throwing snowballs at each other, used to get you an award,

00:12:55.960 or at least wouldn't get you in trouble.

00:12:57.260 Now you can get expelled or suspended for doing things that boys have always done.

00:13:02.460 That's what I mean when I say that school has become unfriendly to boys.

00:13:06.520 Interesting.

00:13:06.720 So the zero-tolerance policies, definitely not boy-friendly.

00:13:10.180 Zero-tolerance policies for violence, meaning that if you bring a G.I. Joe

00:13:15.440 with a plastic rifle to school, you can be suspended.

00:13:20.480 And in my book, I describe several such stages in which elementary school boys were suspended

00:13:25.680 for bringing a plastic G.I. Joe so that I've gone to school.

00:13:29.580 And the principal in each case said, look, it's a zero-tolerance policy.

00:13:34.260 That means I have no discretion.

00:13:37.520 The policy says that any replica gun, regardless of size,

00:13:41.800 mandates a 911 phone call and immediate suspension.

00:13:45.800 And that's what I have to do.

00:13:46.960 And the fact that he's five years old and that the gun is so small,

00:13:50.260 I have to tape it with scotch tape to the report doesn't matter.

00:13:54.980 That's what zero-tolerance means.

00:13:56.540 We now know that zero-tolerance policies are not effective.

00:14:01.380 They do not in any way diminish actual school violence.

00:14:04.920 They do substantially increase disciplinary referrals.

00:14:09.160 And I think they do something else that's harder to measure.

00:14:12.900 They send the message to boys that your kind is not welcome here.

00:14:17.640 You like to write stories about combat and World War II.

00:14:22.980 That's not welcome here.

00:14:24.340 And the boys are getting the message loud and clear.

00:14:27.260 We're seeing a disengagement from education among boys in every demographic,

00:14:32.900 white, black, and Latino, affluent, middle-income, and low-income,

00:14:37.080 which is without precedent in this country.

00:14:40.220 And I can tell you stories from my firsthand experience of families where both mom and dad

00:14:45.700 are professionals, read in their spare time, their daughters read in their spare time.

00:14:50.860 And the son told me he'd rather be boiled in oil than read a book in his spare time,

00:14:55.440 because his favorite free-time activity is playing Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, Halo.

00:15:01.560 How are some of the ways that boys and girls learn different?

00:15:08.260 I think you mentioned in your book that competition is important for boys.

00:15:13.140 Well, again, the big differences between girls and boys are not cognitive, but motivational.

00:15:19.500 The big differences between girls and boys are not in what they can do, but in what they want to do.

00:15:24.520 And that's really the key to understanding all the strategies which I've observed.

00:15:28.500 And, again, I didn't make up any of these strategies.

00:15:30.700 They're all strategies I've observed in schools that are successful.

00:15:36.400 So when you visit a school like Corowa in Melbourne, Australia,

00:15:41.040 where you find that more than half the girls take AP physics, which is an astonishing figure 1.00

00:15:45.140 and unbelievable but true, you find they teach physics in a profoundly different way.

00:15:50.900 They don't teach it the way it's taught in most other English-speaking countries.

00:15:55.400 They don't begin with kinematics.

00:15:56.960 They begin, for example, with the wave-particle duality of light.

00:16:01.280 When you find at schools where all the boys or a great majority of the boys love to write poetry

00:16:09.760 and love to write stories and love Emily Dickinson and Jane Eyre and Jane Austen,

00:16:20.300 you find that they teach it differently.

00:16:23.140 So gender does matter. 1.00

00:16:25.260 And you do need to understand and learn from master teachers how to engage boys in creative writing and poetry

00:16:34.460 and how to engage girls in computer science and physics.

00:16:39.300 And when you do that, you will find that you will break down gender stereotypes,

00:16:42.780 and you can greatly increase the proportion of boys who want to spend their free time reading Emily Dickinson

00:16:49.500 and girls who want to spend their free time writing computer code. 1.00

00:16:54.200 However, it is unforgivable to speak these things in this country,

00:16:58.820 because in this country what happens at schools of education is determined not by data but by politics and ideology.

00:17:05.500 Do, are single-sex classes or schools one solution of many that can help break down those gender stereotypes?

00:17:13.580 I used to think so, and actually took a five-year sabbatical for medical practice,

00:17:19.700 in part to encourage public schools to offer that option as a choice for parents who wanted it,

00:17:26.660 when teachers have appropriate training.

00:17:30.260 But I have pretty much given up on that.

00:17:33.820 The Obama administration appointed an ACLU attorney to govern this domain,

00:17:42.760 and she has decided on her own, without any basis in law or regulation,

00:17:48.140 that such programs should not be allowed in American schools.

00:17:51.960 And so she has embarked on a witch hunt, again, without any justification in law or regulation,

00:18:00.240 to shut these programs down.

00:18:03.040 And it's very difficult, with the federal government actively seeking to shut your program down,

00:18:09.220 to sustain such a program in the United States.

00:18:13.580 I guess it's a shame, because I think I've read,

00:18:15.140 it not only benefits boys, but also girls,

00:18:16.980 because it's one of the problems that girls have in classrooms, 1.00

00:18:20.220 like physics or computer science,

00:18:21.740 is that they have that stereotype in their mind,

00:18:24.540 that they're girls, they can't do this,

00:18:26.700 and then they see the boys raising their hands and jockeying for, you know,

00:18:30.420 trying to make the answers, so they're less likely to participate,

00:18:33.640 I guess they found in all girls' classrooms. 0.90

00:18:36.200 Yeah, that critique had substantial empirical force 30 years ago.

00:18:41.040 But that notion that girls are intimidated because boys are raising their hand

00:18:46.680 really is disconnected from reality today.

00:18:51.660 What's more common in American schools today is what I call Hermione Granger Syndrome,

00:18:56.320 where the girl is waving her hand to answer the teacher's question,

00:19:01.020 and the boys are sitting on their hands, not speaking.

00:19:04.400 That's much more common.

00:19:05.420 But nevertheless, despite the fact that girls today are not intimidated by boys,

00:19:10.220 look, I have met with students in hundreds of schools across the United States.

00:19:15.640 And, for example, I was in a middle school where they had the regular honor roll,

00:19:20.980 which is basically for kids who show up,

00:19:22.800 and then the principal's honor roll, which is for the kids who are doing really well.

00:19:26.700 And there were 22 kids on the principal's honor roll at this particular school in the United States,

00:19:31.800 19 girls and 3 boys.

00:19:34.400 And I asked the boys,

00:19:37.720 can you explain to me why the principal's honor roll,

00:19:42.200 which all the kids understood was the superior honor roll,

00:19:45.320 why does the principal's honor roll have 19 girls and 3 boys?

00:19:49.000 And many boys answered, and they all said the same thing.

00:19:52.560 Girls are smarter. 1.00

00:19:54.600 And they're not joking.

00:19:55.520 American boys now believe that girls are smarter than boys, 0.97

00:19:59.960 which is weird for me because I'm a middle-aged man,

00:20:03.680 meaning that I grew up in the United States in an era where,

00:20:08.120 when boys outnumbered the girls on the honor roll,

00:20:11.180 when those earning honors at high school graduation,

00:20:15.200 from the valedictorian to the winner of honors in English to the editor,

00:20:20.180 I was the editor of our high school newspaper.

00:20:21.900 However, that's very rare today to find a boy at a non-selective public school

00:20:29.360 editing the high school newspaper.

00:20:31.340 He might be editing the sports page,

00:20:33.460 but across the United States today,

00:20:35.340 when you look at who's editing the newspaper, the yearbook,

00:20:38.400 the poetry review,

00:20:40.140 the girls greatly outnumber boys.

00:20:42.500 And this has gone on for so long now that when you ask boys,

00:20:45.760 why is this so?

00:20:47.100 They answer,

00:20:48.400 girls are smarter than boys. 1.00

00:20:50.680 So the 1970s analysis that girls are intimidated by boys in the classroom

00:20:56.540 really is not valid today.

00:21:01.140 And yet,

00:21:02.220 girls remain underrepresented in computer science, physics, electrical engineering,

00:21:06.640 not because they're intimidated by boys,

00:21:09.180 but because teachers have no idea how to teach those subjects to girls. 1.00

00:21:13.180 You have to teach the content differently.

00:21:15.720 It's not about relationships.

00:21:17.560 It's not about making it pink.

00:21:18.880 Again, my book Girls on the Edge focuses on how do you teach this content in a way that works for girls,

00:21:27.740 not based on theory or MRI scans,

00:21:30.380 but based on what actually works in the classroom to engage and motivate girls in computer science, 0.81

00:21:36.380 physics, and electrical engineering.

00:21:37.620 It's pretty well established now but seldom used because, again, the notion merely stating the proposition that the best way to teach computer science to girls

00:21:50.140 is different from the best way to teach computer science to boys is politically unacceptable,

00:21:56.660 even if it is empirically very clear.

00:22:00.860 Again, what is taught in schools of education is not based on data or empirical research.

00:22:06.180 It's based on what is politically correct.

00:22:08.360 Interesting.

00:22:11.020 So also in Boys Adrift, you talk about the uptick in ADHD diagnoses.

00:22:17.720 Why is that happening?

00:22:18.980 Why are there more and more boys on ADHD medication?

00:22:22.560 Right, and it's really dramatic, too, because in 1979, we have a good paper published in Science Magazine

00:22:31.420 showing that about 1% of American kids have been diagnosed with ADD.

00:22:40.240 In 2013, the CDC published data showing that 20% of high school boys in this country have been diagnosed and treated for ADHD,

00:22:49.120 which is astonishing.

00:22:51.160 A boy in the United States is about 14 times more likely than a boy in England to be treated for ADD.

00:23:01.420 And I encountered this myself, again, in my own practice.

00:23:05.620 Parents were stationed in England for four years.

00:23:09.420 Dad was a civilian contractor of the United States Air Force.

00:23:12.460 He was working in England for four years.

00:23:14.040 Their son was four when they went over and eight years old when they returned.

00:23:17.300 An average student.

00:23:19.460 But within weeks of returning to public school in Pennsylvania, Mom told me,

00:23:25.820 other parents and teachers were saying,

00:23:27.740 you know, your son's, you know, not an outstanding student.

00:23:33.000 Yeah, well, why don't you have him evaluated?

00:23:34.980 Maybe he would benefit from being on medication.

00:23:38.060 And I was like, it was creepy.

00:23:39.400 It was like everyone was on the payroll of the drug companies.

00:23:43.440 These are her words.

00:23:45.940 Why in the United States and not elsewhere?

00:23:48.940 A kid in the United States, as I said, is much more likely to be on medication for ADD.

00:23:55.040 A kid in the United States is 40 times more likely to be treated for bipolar disorder,

00:24:00.160 93 times more likely to be on antipsychotic medications like Risperdel or Zyprexa compared to a kid in Italy.

00:24:08.020 Why?

00:24:09.460 There's a couple things going on here.

00:24:11.120 One is the tendency in the United States to regard medication as a first resort rather than a last resort.

00:24:22.420 You know, kids misbehave in all countries.

00:24:24.200 And I have visited schools in Australia, in England, in Canada, in Mexico, in New Zealand, in Scotland.

00:24:34.920 And I can tell you that kids misbehave in all countries.

00:24:39.000 But if a kid in Scotland is running around and throwing things, the teacher will say, it's quite enough of that nonsense.

00:24:46.500 I expect you to sit still and be quiet.

00:24:49.140 But in this country, it is very likely, which is what a teacher in this country might have said 30 years ago.

00:24:54.040 But today, a teacher in this country will say to parents, you know, your child might benefit from evaluation.

00:25:01.900 He might benefit from medication.

00:25:03.100 Have you thought of having him evaluated?

00:25:05.380 And the parents will take him to the doctor.

00:25:07.180 And in this country, the board-certified child psychiatrist will say, well, let's try Adderall and see if it helps.

00:25:13.460 So there's been an explosion in the prescribing of medication.

00:25:18.800 And I explore the reasons in my book, Boys Adrift, and in my forthcoming book, The Collapse of Parenting,

00:25:25.420 which was initially titled The Collapse of American Parenting,

00:25:29.220 Why Most Kids Would Be Better Off Raised Outside the United States. 0.96

00:25:32.820 But non-celebrity authors don't get to choose their titles.

00:25:37.440 And so that title was changed.

00:25:39.520 The title of the book coming out in December is The Collapse of Parenting,

00:25:44.100 The Three Things You Must Do in Order for Your Child to Become a Fulfilled Adult.

00:25:50.060 Are there any detrimental effects of prescribing ADD medication to children who might not need it?

00:26:00.340 Yes.

00:26:00.920 Well, there's detrimental effects regardless of whether the child needs it or not.

00:26:04.960 And I'm talking now about the stimulant medications, Adderall, Ritalin, Concerta, Medidate, Focalin, Datrana,

00:26:12.140 and the most popular one, Vedance.

00:26:14.180 Sounds like a bunch of different medications, but it's actually just two, amphetamine and methylphenidate.

00:26:20.780 Adderall and Vedance, the most popular medications are amphetamines.

00:26:23.920 They're speed.

00:26:24.480 And these medications damage the motivational center of the brain, the nucleus accumbens.

00:26:30.660 And I have 14 good studies, which I cite, showing that these medications, even in low doses,

00:26:39.260 can damage the motivational center of the brain.

00:26:42.620 And, again, I describe such a boy in my own practice.

00:26:48.140 Rolls out of bed late every day.

00:26:51.300 Mom got frustrated with him one day and confronted him and said, you know, what's the story here?

00:26:56.500 You wake up late every day.

00:26:58.680 You work a few hours a week at the coffee shop.

00:27:00.580 You're 27 years old.

00:27:03.560 You don't have a life.

00:27:05.100 You don't even have a girlfriend, for goodness sake.

00:27:07.640 And he laughed.

00:27:08.740 He said, well, I used to have a girlfriend.

00:27:11.320 And she found out I only work a few hours a week at Starbucks.

00:27:14.020 She dumped me.

00:27:16.420 He's fine.

00:27:17.260 Mom is pulling her hair out.

00:27:18.560 And she insisted he come talk to me.

00:27:20.500 He's fine with that.

00:27:21.320 He's known me since he was a kid.

00:27:22.880 He was on Ritalin from 9 years of age to 17 years of age prescribed by a different doctor.

00:27:29.540 That's the end result.

00:27:30.780 When you damage the motivational center of the brain, the nucleus accumbens,

00:27:34.580 you get a boy who looks fine, feels fine, perfectly content.

00:27:39.260 He's got no drive.

00:27:40.840 He's got no drive.

00:27:41.760 He's perfectly content with his 55-inch flat screen, his online pornography, and his video

00:27:47.560 games.

00:27:49.180 I mean, so what should parents do when teachers or counselors or other parents say, hey, maybe

00:27:55.160 you should go get your son checked out?

00:27:56.940 Because I mean, that's a lot of social pressure.

00:27:58.580 Yes, it is.

00:28:00.740 I absolutely agree.

00:28:02.700 And a parent in the United States is under a lot of pressure.

00:28:08.060 If your child is not performing at a high level, you will start to hear those whispers as this

00:28:13.800 parent who returned from England described them.

00:28:16.660 From other parents say, you should have your son evaluated.

00:28:19.320 And I really fought with the publisher to include formal guidelines in my book, Boys Adrift,

00:28:29.880 so that parents can decide on their own, does my child meet criteria for ADD?

00:28:35.700 And the publisher really challenged me and said, are you suggesting, these are the exact

00:28:40.300 words of the publisher to me when Boys Adrift was in production, are you suggesting, the

00:28:46.260 publisher said, that a parent, after reading your book, is competent to question the judgment

00:28:53.740 of a board-certified psychiatrist?

00:28:56.360 And I said, yes.

00:28:58.060 I said, not only that, I'm saying a parent must question the judgment of a board-certified

00:29:02.240 psychiatrist because psychiatrists in the United States prescribe medication for just about

00:29:07.880 every kid who walks in the door.

00:29:09.880 So the moment you make that appointment, it is very likely that the doctor will hand you

00:29:15.360 a prescription at the end of the appointment.

00:29:17.800 And you must be the advocate for your child.

00:29:21.360 And you must question the doctor's diagnosis and the doctor's treatment.

00:29:26.640 Because again, in this country, medication is the first resort.

00:29:29.780 Outside of North America, medication is the last resort.

00:29:33.160 And the result is that we are experimenting on kids in a way which has no precedent.

00:29:39.100 And, you know, I was doing this talk at Grace Church School in Manhattan.

00:29:42.340 And a father stood up and challenged me.

00:29:46.220 He said, Dr. Sachs, I just don't find this believable.

00:29:49.620 He said, millions of kids are taking these medications.

00:29:52.780 And you're suggesting that these medications damage the motivational sound of the brain.

00:29:56.620 I'm sorry, Dr. Sachs.

00:29:57.560 I just can't buy that.

00:29:59.120 If there was any truth to what you're saying, and I interrupted him, I said, if there was any

00:30:04.000 truth to what I'm saying, you'd have heard this before.

00:30:06.280 From a more authoritative source than Leonard Sachs, a family doctor, you'd have heard this

00:30:13.460 from someone like Dr. Joseph Biederman, chief of research in pediatric psychiatry at Harvard

00:30:20.260 Medical School.

00:30:21.800 And, of course, Dad didn't know I was going with this.

00:30:24.140 And I said, you know, the same thought occurred to Senator Charles Grassley, United States

00:30:28.020 Senate Judiciary Committee, who summoned Dr. Biederman to the United States Senate and said,

00:30:33.020 Dr. Biederman, you've really been pushing Adderall hard.

00:30:37.020 You have said that if a parent, if a doctor prescribes Adderall for a child and the parent

00:30:42.260 does not promptly fill and administer that medication, Dr. Biederman, you've said that

00:30:47.740 parent should be considered for charges of criminal child neglect.

00:30:53.000 Dr. Biederman, are you by any chance taking money from the drug companies that you've never

00:30:57.460 publicly disclosed?

00:30:58.380 But it turns out he was, more than $1.6 million, according to his count.

00:31:03.980 That count was never independently verified, which is fine.

00:31:09.280 He didn't break any law.

00:31:11.580 A doctor can accept as much money as he wants to for the drug companies, and he's not breaking

00:31:16.340 any law in the United States.

00:31:18.700 But his action was unethical.

00:31:20.900 He should have told us that he was taking this money, that he was functioning essentially

00:31:25.200 as a paid spokesperson for the drug companies.

00:31:28.660 But he's still a director of pediatric psychiatry research at Harvard, despite all the articles

00:31:34.900 of the New York Times documenting how he took all this money.

00:31:38.800 And it's not just Dr. Biederman.

00:31:43.260 Senator Grassley, in his investigation, had many of the leading lights of American psychiatry

00:31:50.900 come in, and the most chilling line of testimony, he asked one of these psychiatrists who had

00:31:56.680 accepted millions of dollars and not disclosed it, why didn't you disclose it?

00:32:01.560 And the psychiatrist said, well, because it's standard practice.

00:32:07.120 Standard practice.

00:32:08.240 Those were his exact words.

00:32:09.360 And that's very troubling when the leaders of child psychiatry say that it's standard

00:32:14.520 practice for the leaders of child psychiatry to accept millions of dollars from drug companies

00:32:18.880 and not to tell us about it.

00:32:20.940 That's really troubling.

00:32:22.120 Now, your local child psychiatrist isn't getting anything, I assure you.

00:32:25.500 And I've given these talks to psychiatrists, and they are incensed that their leaders have

00:32:29.900 sold out, that the leaders of child psychiatry in the United States at Harvard, at Emory,

00:32:34.840 at the National Institute of Mental Health, have accepted millions of the drug companies,

00:32:39.800 never disclosed it, and made these pronouncements without telling us that they were functioning

00:32:45.680 as paid spokesmen, and they were all men, paid spokesmen for the drug companies.

00:32:51.980 Wow.

00:32:52.400 That's incredible.

00:32:54.020 We don't have that anywhere outside of North America.

00:32:56.800 Yes.

00:32:57.120 It's unique to the United States.

00:32:58.420 So, one factor that you talked about in Boys Adrift that I didn't really know much about

00:33:05.740 until I read about it, that's starting, we're seeing how it's affecting boys, and I think

00:33:10.220 there's even research saying it's affecting girls as well, is this endocrine disruptors?

00:33:16.740 Endocrine disruptors.

00:33:17.460 Endocrine disruptors.

00:33:18.960 What are those, and how do they affect the physical, mental, and emotional health of boys

00:33:22.640 and girls?

00:33:24.120 And girls, absolutely.

00:33:25.360 So, that's a focus not only of my book, Boys Adrift, but also of my book, Girls on the

00:33:29.520 Edge.

00:33:30.600 So, when I give this talk to parents, I'll look around for someone who has a clear plastic

00:33:35.840 water bottle, and I'll hold it up.

00:33:38.660 And I'll say, this bottle is made out of polyethylene terephthalate, and it was probably shipped in

00:33:44.140 the truck.

00:33:45.800 And inside a truck, the temperature can get very warm.

00:33:49.460 Inside a closed truck on a sunny day, even if the ambient temperature is not warm, the

00:33:55.980 temperature in the truck can easily rise to 120, 140 degrees Fahrenheit.

00:34:00.920 And when that happens, toxins such as diathlethyl phthalate and antimony will leak out of the

00:34:07.880 plastic and into the water.

00:34:10.400 They're odorless, they're tasteless, but they work in your body like a female hormone, like 1.00

00:34:16.120 estrogen.

00:34:18.060 And the irony is that these people think they're really healthy by drinking bottled water, and,

00:34:22.800 of course, they're consuming these endocrine disruptors, substances that work in the human

00:34:26.840 body the way that female hormones do. 1.00

00:34:29.740 And the effects are different on boys compared with girls.

00:34:33.680 In boys, in teenage boys, you drop testosterone levels.

00:34:38.140 And teenage boys need testosterone for motivation, among other things.

00:34:42.220 And I document and explain that point in Boys and Drift.

00:34:49.020 But the effect in girls is to accelerate the onset of puberty. 0.85

00:34:53.200 And so, in the United States, more than half of girls have now begun the process of puberty

00:34:58.080 before 10 years of age.

00:35:00.180 Puberty accelerated for both boys and girls throughout much of the 20th century, but in

00:35:04.180 the last 30 years, the age of onset of puberty has not changed for boys.

00:35:09.100 It's stayed around 12 years of age, but it has accelerated, continued to accelerate, really

00:35:15.180 without pause, in girls.

00:35:16.980 So that, as I said, more than half of American girls have now begun puberty prior to 10 years

00:35:21.060 of age.

00:35:23.280 And that's really harmful for lots of reasons, for girls and for boys.

00:35:27.320 I was sitting in a 7th grade classroom where there was a 13-year-old boy sitting next to

00:35:35.900 a 13-year-old girl.

00:35:37.180 The 13-year-old girl could easily have passed for a 16-year-old girl.

00:35:40.620 The process of puberty was complete.

00:35:42.540 The 13-year-old boy could easily have passed for a 9-year-old boy.

00:35:46.320 The process of puberty had not yet begun.

00:35:48.420 There's always been a sex difference in the age of onset of puberty.

00:35:52.800 But 30 years ago, it was a matter of months.

00:35:54.580 Now it's a matter of years.

00:35:57.520 But, again, talking about boys, you look at men at university in the United States, and

00:36:05.320 according to recent studies, one in three college-age men now report difficulty achieving and maintaining

00:36:12.660 an erection. 0.60

00:36:14.440 A college-age man today has a testosterone level comparable to what would have been seen in

00:36:21.240 a 50-year-old man two generations back.

00:36:25.480 So this has big consequences.

00:36:30.480 And one, of course, which is the decline of courtship.

00:36:35.680 And you find quite a few men, and I've spoken to them personally, who would rather masturbate

00:36:41.320 over pornography rather than pursue and date and be intimate with a young woman.

00:36:47.840 That is now common in the United States if it would have been considered pathological

00:36:51.860 as recently as 20 years ago.

00:36:55.800 Fascinating.

00:36:55.980 So what can people or parents do to avoid or mitigate the effects of these disruptors?

00:37:03.060 Yeah, it's actually very easy to protect your child from endocrine disruptors.

00:37:08.820 Don't ever cook anything in plastic.

00:37:10.680 Don't buy anything that's shipped room temperature in plastic.

00:37:14.680 It's fine to buy juice in plastic if it was shipped refrigerated and it's stored refrigerated

00:37:20.800 in the grocery store.

00:37:22.480 But plastic is the source of many of these endocrine disruptors.

00:37:25.840 Cosmetics, likewise, many of the shampoos and lotions that children, especially girls,

00:37:34.100 use are very high in these endocrine disruptors.

00:37:38.000 Manufacturers in the United States are not required to disclose that.

00:37:41.140 But again, I provide very detailed guidelines in my book, Girls on the Edge, and also for

00:37:47.140 boys in Boys Adrift.

00:37:48.840 Fascinating.

00:37:49.480 I know a lot of our listeners are the parents of sons.

00:37:52.580 They're also the parents of daughters.

00:37:53.760 You mentioned one of the challenges facing girls is the way that we teach, for example, 1.00

00:37:59.700 physics or computer science just isn't what motivates them or gets them interested.

00:38:04.200 What are some other challenges facing young girls in America today?

00:38:10.700 Well, I think the sexualization of girlhood is a big one. 0.72

00:38:14.680 That's the opening chapter of my book, Girls on the Edge.

00:38:17.240 And I begin the book with Halloween with, again, a family from my own medical practice where

00:38:25.960 mom was trying to persuade her daughter to wear the Bavarian Dirndl outfit that she had

00:38:32.340 worn for Halloween when she was 10 years old.

00:38:35.620 And the girl said, no, you know, I've already picked up my outfit.

00:38:39.440 But this was a few years back, she had chosen a Pussycat Dolls outfit, which consisted of

00:38:45.060 a brassiere top, hot pants, fishnet lingerie, and stiletto heels, which they had bought, which

00:38:51.340 was on sale at Walmart.

00:38:53.720 You know, if you imagine walking to Sears 30 years ago saying, hey, I'd like to buy an

00:38:58.760 outfit for my nine-year-old girl that consists of a brassiere top, hot pants, fishnet lingerie,

00:39:05.780 and stiletto heels, they'd probably call the police. 0.97

00:39:09.340 You know, they'd probably arrest you because you're obviously a pedophile.

00:39:12.680 But today, this is sold at Walmart and all the other major outlets, and here's what scary

00:39:19.400 is what all the cool nine-year-old girls are wearing. 1.00

00:39:21.960 And when mom said, well, you know, if you don't want to dress up in my outfit, look, there's

00:39:25.620 a bunch of grapes.

00:39:26.380 You could dress up like a bunch of grapes.

00:39:27.540 And her daughter said, Mom, only the fat girls dress like that. 1.00

00:39:32.860 The cool girls, going back now to my own words, the cool girls all dress in this provocative

00:39:39.700 and revealing stuff.

00:39:43.480 That's what you wear if you're a cool girl and you're nine years old in the United States.

00:39:47.620 And this is really harmful because presenting yourself as a sexual object when you're a nine

00:39:53.060 or 10-year-old girl, before you have a sexual agenda, we now have good research on this. 0.78

00:39:58.180 It dislocates your sexual frame of reference.

00:40:06.140 Sexuality becomes a performance, a show that you put on for boys.

00:40:09.560 And one consequence of this is an explosion in the proportion of girls who identify as lesbian

00:40:16.580 or bisexual.

00:40:17.780 Fifty years ago, the best numbers were that between one and two percent of American women 1.00

00:40:23.220 identified as lesbian or bisexual.

00:40:25.540 Right now, depending on which study you look at, between 15 and 24 percent of young women

00:40:34.480 and teenage girls identify as lesbian or bisexual.

00:40:38.320 So that's a factor of 10 increase, a tenfold increase in 50 years.

00:40:43.700 When you look at men, what proportion of men identify as gay or bisexual hasn't changed in 50 years.

00:40:50.600 It stayed rock solid at 3 to 4 percent.

00:40:54.680 So why is that?

00:40:56.260 Why has this exploded for girls and really not changed at all for boys?

00:41:00.820 Well, that's, again, the focus of the opening chapters of Girls on the Edge.

00:41:05.160 But one reason is the sexualization of girlhood, the way in which the society, the culture, 0.99

00:41:14.140 the popular culture, including the Disney Channel, now pushes girls to present themselves sexually 0.97

00:41:19.220 at eight, nine years of age in a way that would have been unthinkable and considered perverse

00:41:25.400 a generation ago.

00:41:27.760 Middle school has trickled down into third grade, and I've had eight-year-old girls whose mom

00:41:35.460 told me that she's refusing to go to school because the boys say she has a muffin top,

00:41:43.160 meaning that you have to wear midriff to be a cool girl at eight years of age.

00:41:47.080 And she has a little roll of baby fat over her belt line, and that's what the kids call 1.00

00:41:54.860 a muffin top, and it's an insult.

00:41:58.660 And so she doesn't want to go to school.

00:42:00.400 She is judging herself based on whether or not the boys think she's cute at eight years 0.90

00:42:06.160 of age, and that's really harmful.

00:42:08.100 Yeah, and I'm sure that leads to further problems of body dysmorphia, anorexia, bulimia

00:42:13.380 later on.

00:42:14.760 Yep.

00:42:15.020 Well, Dr. Sachs, this has been just a really fascinating discussion, and we didn't get

00:42:19.400 to everything we could talk about because there's so much.

00:42:22.800 But where can people learn more about you and your work?

00:42:26.520 Well, thank you.

00:42:27.800 I just hired a professional web designer to bring my website into the 21st century.

00:42:32.720 It's LearnSachs.com, where you can see all the presentations I'm doing and send me an

00:42:39.120 email, and I do try to answer every one if I possibly can.

00:42:41.900 Fantastic.

00:42:42.560 Well, Dr. Sachs, thank you so much for your time.

00:42:44.180 It's been a pleasure.

00:42:45.260 Thanks again.

00:42:46.220 Our guest today was Dr. Leonard Sachs.

00:42:47.720 He's the author of the book, Why Gender Matters, Boys Adrift, Girls on the Edge.

00:42:51.800 You can find those all on Amazon.com.

00:42:54.120 Go pick them up if you want.

00:42:55.800 And also, you can find out more information about his work at LeonardSachs.com.

00:43:00.260 And that's L-E-O-N-A-R-D-S-A-X.com. 0.96

The Art of Manliness - September 08, 2015

#136： Boys Adrift With Dr. Leonard Sax

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