Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men by Leonard Sax
	Basic Books	267 pages	August 2007	Hardcover

My sister suggested I read this book. She suggested it more than once. It got to be a "thing" between us, so I got a copy of Boys Adrift and plunged in. What I discovered on the languid shoreless sea of modern boyhood was disturbing and revealing, and I had to agree with Sis – this is a book worth reading, and worth passing on to friends and family.

The subject is becoming more widely discussed as some thoughtful parents and educators scratch their heads or wring their hands about what is happening to boys in school - and what happens to boys when, leaving school, they must enter the professional competitive world where, as we all know, boys become men. Statistics indicate that fewer males go to or finish college than a generation ago; estimates are that "in about 10 years, we will be seeing a 2-to-1 female-to-male ratio in college degrees awarded." Part of the message of Leonard Sax's research is that boys aren't becoming men - at least not as many of them as used to, and not to the same degree as they once did. Sax, a family physician and research psychologist, stated in one interview that he is prescribing Viagra nowadays for men in their thirties.

Sax postulates "five factors driving the decline of boys." One is purely biological. It's so far-fetched that it could make you run for the nearest exit, but since everything else Sax proposes seems so logical, you should carefully consider what he has to say about the dangers of drinking water from plastic bottles. Sax says that plastic bottles contain endocrine disruptors and estrogens, in sufficient quantity to lower the libido of your son no matter how much football you play with him and how many X-rated videos he watches when you're not supervising his time.

If you can move past this assertion on the part of the wise and experienced doctor, you will find yourself in more familiar territory. The other factors are: changes at school, video games, medications for ADHD, and the loss of positive male role models. For the last one, we have only to note that the current generation has traded Father Knows Best and Andy Griffith for The Simpsons.

Boys are under considerable pressure at an early age to perform academically. At preschool age, girls are better suited neurologically both to organize numbers and words and to obey authority. The boy brain just isn't prepared for kindergarten, which used to be about games and songs and lots of playtime, but has become as grade and achievement-oriented as university. By the time many boys get to elementary school, they're already burned out on the education process and convinced, often rightly so, that teachers don't like them. Many bright boys wind up in slow classes and wind down into a world of lessened responsibility and lowered expectations. Some wind up – into hyperactive dynamos who are treated with brain-numbing drugs.

Parents sense that there is something wrong with the picture but are inclined to go along with the advice they get through "the system." To placate their boys, who now have an official diagnosis of ADHD or other disorder, they buy them video games. The games keep them occupied and quiet. They also remove boys from the real world and disengage them from the natural learning process, turning them into passive recipients of artificial stimulation. That, in a nutshell, is Dr. Sax's disturbing view of modern boyhood, which ends, he says without humor, in "failure to launch" – many more young men simply live at home, he states, with no compelling reason to achieve, no new worlds to conquer, no dragons to slay.

Sax offers remedies: if your son seems to be in line for a psychological evaluation, be sure that his diagnosis is accurate. Don't accept an ADHD label without a thorough fact-check. And be sure your son is in the right kind of school environment; don't take the easy route so alluring offered: "rather than question the wisdom of a curriculum that requires five-year-old boys to sit still and be quiet, it's easier just to prescribe the medication." Take away the joyless passivity-producing toys and try to reconnect your son with the older generation, or make a point of exploring how more traditional cultures, value men and male attributes (with the caution that some such societies are very anti-female). And lobby for bottles made of safe materials – the website www.BoysAdrift.com offers the latest product developments.