As I look at my 5-year old son, I hope that I am helping to mold
a young man who lives his life with integrity and self-reliance,
understanding the value of hard work and good manners and the true
self-esteem that only these things can create within a productive
life.
I think my wife and I are doing well, being conscious
of these things, but as I look around us, what is happening — what
has happened — to a generation of boys and young men in America is
saddening and frightening.
About a month ago, my wife handed me a book and said “you really
have to read this.” She sounded like she meant it, so I did. She
was right.
The book is
Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing
Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men, by
Dr. Leonard Sax.
If you are the parent of a boy under the age of 18 or so, this
book is a must read. Really… must read.
Dr. Sax describes and explains how changes in our educational
system, such as removing competition and “zero tolerance” policies
for even
pretending to use fake guns, along with over-prescription
of ADHD drugs and — a particularly damaging aspect of modern life
— over-playing of video games are creating a generation of
unmotivated, unaccomplished slackers.
American society, perhaps as an unintended consequence of our
1960s-1980s frenzy of “women’s rights,” is leaving boys behind.
I had the opportunity to interview Dr. Sax on my radio show
recently. Again, if you’re a parent of a boy, it is well worth 40
minutes of your time to listen.
Have you ever had an experience, such as with a new word or new
concept, when after the first time you hear it, you then run across
it again two or three more times within just a few days?
Although reading Boys Adrift was not the first time
I’ve thought about being a good parent, it was the first time I
thought deeply about how our current culture is impacting millions
of American males soon to reach what should be their most enjoyable
and productive years.
But over the following week, I ran into multiple reminders of
the lessons of the book, of the longer-term consequences of an
anti-boy culture on America’s future men and on our nation
itself.
First, at a recent event, I heard
Andrea Tantaros of Fox News’ The Five speak. She
touched briefly on this topic and mentioned how hard it has been
for her — a smart, accomplished, and attractive 34-year-old woman
— to find a quality guy to date. I suppose that’s good news for
high-quality men, but as we see males becoming smaller and smaller
percentages of college
students, and larger and large percentages of college drop-outs, as
we see 20-somethings sitting in parents’ basements playing video
games, the situation inspires fear for our nation’s future, both
economically and culturally.
These changes in higher education can turn into a
self-reinforcing problem if women’s perception of American men
leads them to believe that career is a better opportunity than
family. With the plunging odds of finding a quality man, a man who
can adequately support a family and also be an excellent husband
and role model for children, the single, career-minded life becomes
a better bet for American women. And intentional single motherhood
becomes a more rational choice, although I wonder if most single
moms know just how important it is for their sons to have exposure
to good male role models — something a woman, by definition,
simply can’t be.
A decline in birth rate, especially among the most educated and
most wealthy sector of American society, bodes ill for our nation’s
prospects of remaining the envy of the world.
I was reminded again of the idea of men acting like “real men,”
rather than like spoiled children or sitcom characters, by a column
by Steven Crowder. Steven is best-known for his
hilarious-while-insightful videos, but he
recently penned a piece entitled “Be
a Real Man, and Honor Your Wife!” which I encourage you all to
read.
I have to admit: I have very rarely bad-mouthed my wife to a
friend, but Steven’s column made me feel quite bad about the
count-on-one-hand number of times I’ve done it — because I know
he’s absolutely right. And while even his serious work is funny,
Crowder’s article should be widely shared and its admonition
appreciated by women and men alike.
But perhaps the most dramatic illustration of the relative
decline in the strength of men versus women came in visiting the
Colorado State Capitol to report on testimony before State Senate
committees regarding a raft of anti-gun legislation being foisted
on Colorado by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his useful
Democrat tools in my state’s legislature.
Sure, there were a lot of men (and women) around wearing “I’m
pro-gun and I vote” stickers. Most of them were over 40 years old,
and many were over sixty. And the state sheriffs, who were
uniformly (if you’ll pardon the pun) excellent witnesses against
the various bills, were all men — men whose planned pay increases
are now being
threatened by Democrats.
(Mark Kelly, the astronaut husband of former Congresswoman
Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), was sadly not a great role model as he
testified for the Democrats’ radical gun restrictions while
claiming to be a supporter of the Second Amendment. When
questioned, he did not know the details of the bill he was
testifying for. Astonishingly, Capt. Kelly’s testimony in Denver
was given the day after he reportedly
purchased an AR-15 rifle with “high-capacity” (liberal-speak
for standard capacity) magazines and a .45 caliber semi-automatic
pistol. Does anybody believe Kelly when he suggests he bought the
“assault rifle” just to prove how easy it was to buy? When American
astronauts can’t be counted on as role models, you know something
is wrong with the country. But I digress…)
The most effective and bravest testimony that day in Denver came
from young women, including two rape victims (Amanda Collins
testimony here, radio
interviews with Amanda and with Kim Weeks here)
and the daughter of a woman who was murdered by the last person to
be executed in Colorado (more than 15 years ago).
The courage and strength shown in their testimony was not only
remarkable in its own right, but highlighted for me the absence of
similarly strong, principled, and articulate young men.
Our nation’s future depends on men acting as men should act.
Women are great, and women are equal to or better than men in many
aspects, but not in every aspect. There are things that (in most
cases) only men can do and, more importantly, there are things men
should do.
Men should be strong yet well-mannered, courageous without being
boastful, protective without making a woman feeling incapable. This
is of course far from a complete list, and each person will have
his or her own priorities and values. But men should be what good
men by nature are, not what a radical-feminist gender-neutral
zero-tolerance ADHD-overdiagnosing Xbox-addled society is turning
the next generation of American males into.
Through an overzealous feminism which abandoned boys in a
supposed effort to boost girls, through political correctness, a
leftist educational establishment, and a horribly damaging-to-boys
psychology-pharmacology complex, America has created a functional
analog to China’s demographic problem.
The “one child” policy in China resulted in the murder or
abandonment of millions, perhaps tens of millions, of female
Chinese infants and children over several decades, leaving a
country with far more men than women and a tremendous challenge for
their future. There are not enough women for the men to marry in
order to sustain adequate population growth (and there is almost
zero immigration into China). As I heard someone once say, China
may grow old before it grows rich.
American society has not caused the preferential murder of boys,
but the factors mentioned above have created a generation of young
men who are less productive, less ambitious, less marriage-worthy,
less interested in doing anything that is of more than the smallest
benefit to themselves or to society.
To be clear, I am not talking about doing something with the
specific purpose of benefiting society, but rather having a job or
a family or anything else that would tend to benefit the nation
indirectly. Indeed, to the extent that more young adult Americans
are spending their weekdays in volunteer work or “community
service” I would suggest that is a sign of cultural decay (and lack
of economic opportunity) rather than progress, of irresponsiblity
rather than the hard work and psychological and economic risk of
being judged by the brutally honest free market. Rather than a
symbiotic relationship with the country, we have a large cohort of
young men who should be the foundation of our nation’s future but
are instead little more than parasites.
So whereas men can’t find women in China, young adult women
struggle to find young adult men, at least men worth finding, in
the United States.
But the primary blame for these boys not living up to their
potential does not lie with the boys themselves. It takes a truly
unusual person to escape by his own efforts the educational and
cultural quicksand into which so many American boys are being
casually tossed.
The only solution to the disaster that is befalling our nation’s
boys is good parenting. The same forces which are, even if mostly
unintentionally, causing the intellectual and emotional atrophy of
these boys have purposefully endeavored to replace parents with
teachers, school counselors, coaches, psychologists, and every
other poor substitute from the “it takes a village” faction of the
American left.
Just as liberals believe Americans are too stupid to make our
own economic or health or soda size decisions, they also believe we
are too stupid to properly parent our children. And just as with
everything else in life, if something is everybody’s
responsibility, it is nobody’s responsibility — despite the
concern of many truly caring teachers, principals, and others who
are not our children’s parents.
While those who incessantly beat the “it takes a village drum”
are partly responsible for causing many parents to shirk their most
important duty, American adults must also look in the mirror when
seeking someone to blame for the rude, slothful slacker playing
Xbox in the basement who feels that stealing a virtual car and
murdering a virtual prostitute or policeman is the greatest
satisfaction life can offer.
Parents, especially of boys, take control! Be a parent, not your
kid’s best friend. Create and enforce boundaries. Limit video
games, both in time and content. Don’t look in a pill bottle for
answers. Don’t fear competition, even aggressive competition, or
the use of plastic or imaginary guns. And perhaps most importantly,
recognize that words are cheap, and that your children will
internalize what you do, not what you say.
Having an unmotivated, unproductive, fundamentally unhappy son
is a difficult and sad situation for a family. Having a generation
of them is a disaster for a nation.
Photo: UPI
