How to keep your son from being a mama's boy

Boys Adrift: Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men by Leonard Sax

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
I started reading this book after hearing about it from a mom of a teenage boy. Her son is a good kid: good student, practices his faith, athletic, mannerly, but she saw warning signs of how easily good kids can go astray when they don’t have someone to help guide them. If she was concerned about her son, I figured I ought to be concerned about mine, since I have five, and three of them still have many years before they enter the turbulent teens. Best to be prepared.

It didn’t take long before I couldn’t put the book down. Dr. Sax relates stories of real boys, told by real parents, and how they were often intelligent kids, who lacked motivation for school or life outside of video games. I could easily imagine any of my boys, given free reign, could easily turn into video zombies. Girls might spend too much time chatting with their friends on Facebook, but boys like to play action-packed video games until their eyes glaze over and their heads drop to the keyboard from lack of sleep. Neither food, nor school, nor senior prom can propel them from the game machine unless a parental foot on the backside gives them an extra boost.

So it was with a great deal of expectation that I read Dr. Sax’s book on the “growing epidemic of unmotivated boys and underachieving young men.”

I suspect everyone knows at least one (or dozens) of 18 to 30 year-old males who seem to have no motivation for doing much of anything with their lives, but are often content with their low-paying jobs and single status, quite frequently still living at home with Mom and Dad. Before you call me judgmental, look at the statistics: Women now outnumber men on college campuses and in medical and veterinary schools. The number of women entering traditionally male fields, such as engineering and technology, is increasing, while the number of men entering those fields is decreasing. Where are the men going? They’re dropping out of college, or not even entering in the first place.

Dr. Sax lists five reasons for the alarming trend of unmotivated males. No, it’s not all the fault video games, although that is the first reason he lists. The others are: the feminization of education, overuse of prescription medication (for ADHD), endocrine disruptors in the environment, and the devaluation of masculinity.

He makes compelling arguments for each of the five reasons and all parents of boys should educate themselves on these topics. The one I found most interesting, and the one I’d heard nothing about was endocrine disruptors in the environment. These are environmental pollutants caused from a variety of sources, including phthalates found in plastics such as plastic water and soda bottles, pacifiers and baby bottles. These endocrine disruptors have been shown to cause early onset of puberty in girls, while having the opposite effect on boys. According to Dr. Sax, “The overwhelming majority of modern chemicals that mimic the action of human sex hormones, curiously, mimic the action only of female hormones.” They have also been linked with the disruption of brain function in the area of memory and motivation, as well as ADHD, again, affecting girls differently than boys. He also refers to these chemicals as “environmental estrogen,” as they mimic those female hormones. Dr. Sax further gives evidence that the increase in childhood obesity can be directly linked to these environmental estrogens. There are other alarming symptoms as well: male genital abnormalities, lower testosterone levels and male infertility.

Another pollutant in our environment that affects males far more than females is pornography. (See my book review on The ABCs of Choosing a Good Husband). Men no longer need women for sex, just as women no longer need men for babies. As a result, men and women are putting off marriage until much later, or in many cases, forsaking it altogether. Dr. Sax cites the number of men ages thirty-five to forty who have never been married has tripled in the last thirty years. Just twenty-five years ago it was 8%. It currently stands at 22% and is rising rapidly.

Dr. Sax also mentions the rise of contraception as a cause of the divorce of marriage from sex. (Once again, Pope Paul VI was right). Dr. Sax says, “More and more boys are discovering that they prefer a sexy image on a computer screen to a real live woman with expectations…” Some of the physical results of this dependency on pornography are the increasing number of men who need Viagra or Cialis.

And now the good news:

Dr. Sax gives hope to concerned parents (and disaffected young males) by giving concrete examples of young men whose lives were turned around by some simple changes. Enroll in an all-boy school. Get off unnecessary medications. Get unhooked from the video games and get involved in athletic competitions. Have examples of manly behavior from men. Experience the real world by getting outdoors. Do something physically demanding. Sweat.

For more information read the book and go to the website: www.boysadrift.com and www.singlesexschools.org.

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What makes a good husband?

The ABC's of Choosing a Good Husband: How to Find and Marry a Great Guy by Stephen Wood

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
At first glance, the cover and title of this book and its partner book, The ABCs of Choosing a Good Wife were off-putting to say the least. It seemed juvenile to think one could just apply a list to select a spouse. In fact, everyone I've known who has a "list" for a spouse, usually ends up disappointed because the "perfect" partner doesn't exist except in our imaginations.

However, once I got into this book, I found the ideas riveting and somewhat frightening. The reason they were frightening is because the author, Stephen Wood, makes sense when he speaks to young women about what qualities make a good husband. Unfortunately, many of these qualities women hope their future husbands will have, such as being self-giving, considerate, patient, affectionate, generous, honorable, humble, strong, caring, responsible and mature, are often qualities that young men today are lacking. Sometimes women will fall in love anyway and hope to "change" their husbands once they're married. The truth is marriage isn't the force to change their behaviors. In fact, marriage can sometimes exacerbate underlying character flaws such as irresponsibility, immaturity, narcissism, and selfishness.

The most frightening chapter of all is chapter 18, "Ruinous Effects of Pornography on Your Future Marriage." I recently chatted with a priest friend at a party and he told me he is concerned that so many young men today have a warped view of sexuality due to pornography that they might not be able to make and keep a sacramental marriage. The plague of pornography has become so widespread, that some experts suggest as much as 70% of all college-aged men use pornography and some of these will go on to be so addicted to it that they will prefer pornographic experiences over real women.

According to Stephen Wood: "Annual porn profits exceed the combined revenues of all the professional football, basketball, and baseball franchises." And, "Every thirty-nine minutes a new porn video is created in the United States."

As if those statistics aren't scary enough, he goes on to outline the extent to which pornography has affected Christian men. "In a 1996 survey, 53% of Promise Keepers (Christian men) admitted to viewing porn within a week of attending a PK event." And, "In a (Protestant) pastors.com survey, 54% of pastors said they viewed porn within the past 12 months."

He goes on to say the pornography crisis is even worse among Catholic men. It has affected Catholic men in all walks of life, from priests and deacons, to seminarians (even at the "good" seminaries), to youth group and campus leaders and students on orthodox Catholic college campuses to Catholic homeschooling fathers. Some estimates are that half of all the men attending your parish are ensnared by pornography. He estimates at least two-thirds of all eligible Catholic men have a problem with pornography. That's scary.

Pornography is addictive to men particularly because it causes chemical changes in the brain. Technology has shown us that when pornography is viewed, there are at least a half-dozen neuro-chemicals released into the brain which not only gives the viewer pleasure, but also permanently etches images in his memory. Like other addictions, greater extremes of pornography must be viewed in order for the brain to register the same feelings of pleasure. Ultimately, the man has become a slave to pornography and will choose the pictures or videos over being with his wife.

There are other issues that can kill a marriage, and Stephen Wood lays them all out, in ABC order, to help young women navigate the way to a happy and healthy marriage.

I highly recommend this book to parents as well as young women and men who are contemplating the vocation of marriage.

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