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Boys Adrift

marm

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I heard an interview with Dr. Leonard Sax on the radio show Coast to Coast AM. He was discussing his book Boys Adrift. The book focuses on the development of boys, but does so in terms of considering both genders. His basic premise is that for various reasons normal development has been altered in the past generation or so.

The website about this book:
Boys Adrift

Here is an excerpt from his book Why Gender Matters and an interview with him on the Today show:
Are kids hardwired differently? - TODAY: Books - MSNBC.com

The primary problem he sees is the estrogen-like chemicals that leach out of clear plastic bottles. This causes boys to develop slower and not to develop normally, and it causes girls to develop faster. Young men now have majorly decreased levels of testosterone and sperm count than previous generations.

Another major problem is that the school system has tried to treat boys and girls equally in recent decades. Teachers don't take into account that boys and girls develop differently, and the natural behavior of boys has become unacceptable in schools. To try to calm boys down more like girls, drugs such as ritalin have increasingly been given to boys. This is a twofold problem. Boys are stunted psychologically which is bad enough, but the drugs have long-term consequences on brain development. It causes a part of the brain that relates to motivation to not to fully develop.

So, this means that young men are becoming evermore effeminate and apathetic. Young women are more likely to go to college, get degrees, and get professional careers. Also, with the sexual dynamic messed up, sexual attraction has decreased and along with it so has marriage.
 

sassafrassquatch

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I Googled him. He sounds like a sexist kook with a hard on for the repressive gender roles of the 1950s. As an unmotivated, video game playing young man with no interest in marriage, I cordially invite him to blow me.
 

Totenkindly

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hmmm, always the thoughtful, provocative, educated response. ;)

...

Actually, I've seen some of the same trends as Sax mentions, but I haven't studied the actual details enough to know for sure about the estrogens leaking into the environment, etc. That one certainly has come up before... and it's definitely true that girls are physically maturing far earlier than they used to (developing breasts/curves and menstruating).

It's pretty clear, though, that the school systems cater to certain personality types. In the past decade, there does seem to have been a shift more towards hands-on learning (rather than "at desk" learning), which I think helps boys out immensely.
 

marm

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I don't know to the extent that he is true, but I think there is something to it. He says that recent research gives evidence to his claims. His ideas don't seem absurd to me. They fit my limited observations of kids these days... a category I include myself in as I'm on the younger end of Gen X.

I wouldn't take it as a personal insult or anything just because he is critical of video games. Replace internet and tv for the video game part, and how you described yourself fits me.

I haven't read any of his books. All I know about him is the interview I just heard. I don't entirely agree with him. I don't think the video game argument is strong, and I don't entirely accept his cultural criticisms as being necessary conclusions of the evidence. I think his strongest argument is his central one about estrogen-like chemicals because that part can be looked at clearly using scientific research.
 

FFF

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breast cancer and maturation in girls

From the China Study by T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D:

Risk of Breast Cancer Increases When a Woman Has:
  1. Early Age of Menarche
  2. Late Age of Menopause
  3. High Levels of Female Hormones in the Blood
  4. High Blood Cholesterol
a Diet High in Animal Foods and Refined Carbs:
  1. Lowers the Age of Menarche
  2. Raises the Age of Menopause
  3. Increases Female Hormone Levels
  4. Increases Blood Cholesterol Levels
 

marm

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Dr. Sax did mention the increases of breast cancer.

I've looked into traditional diets. From my understanding, the health issues are related to refined carbs, but not directly to animal foods in general. Specifically, its animal foods high in saturated fats and uncultured dairy products.

There are many factors. But the the most central factors probably have to do with changes in substances we take into our bodies in one way or another. The cultural factors are more secondary is my guess... and more hypothetical.
 

FFF

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Dr. Sax did mention the increases of breast cancer.

I've looked into traditional diets. From my understanding, the health issues are related to refined carbs, but not directly to animal foods in general. Specifically, its animal foods high in saturated fats and uncultured dairy products.

There are many factors. But the the most central factors probably have to do with changes in substances we take into our bodies in one way or another. The cultural factors are more secondary is my guess... and more hypothetical.

I do remember seeing graphs in that book where animal fats were correlated with breast cancer, and plant fats ended up resulting in dots all over the place (no pattern).
 

GZA

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I've heard this theory before. I think its interesting. I'm a 16 year old guy, and to some degree I can relate to some things (being unmotivated), but I'm not sure how true it all is. I'm going to look into it more.
 

badsykes

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I tend to relate to this and i am 24 years old.Maybe autosuggestion helped me stay in this stuff.Imo if i lose my childish part i lose everything that makes me different.Jokes, creativity, entuziasm and time for myself..Life that usual girls wants when they enter into a relationship is looking very boring, routine, hitting walls all time for me..This is from my little experience around me from seeing different couples ranging from parents to young couples.I had some relationships going 5 years ago and i get bored..The one that lasted was 2 weeks long :)..Many normal girls don't like me..I hate my parents way of life, i hate their mentality..Maybe this triggered something overtime like a sublimal message.
About motivation i agree also.I am very very picky about where i put my effort.Usualy my brain is not motivated with normal things even if that normal thing is very important overall.I can't force this..On the other hand when i am motivated to do something i tend to be obssesed about that thing like not sleep, all time thinking at it without forcing this, daydreaming and visions with that thing...Around my relatives , family, cousins i am the black sheep.
I am considered the un-mature male, kiddy etc..The reasons are stupid and they repeat same same thing all over again like "you need to get a girlfriend" , "you need to get a home", "make family", "you need to choose social and monden life like buying clothes and parfumes" blabla..I told them one thing ...I wanna be a researcher and until i will not reach that field i will not get involved in relationships and other craps like this...I am preparing myself for worst case scenario when i am alone all my life like a rat lab.I will sink in my job and go around the planet and visit nature as much as i can..To live alone in this calvar you must have YOUR OWN PERSONAL preocupation very well defined.Making social life a platform for your life is not the way for this..You talk to people, you keep friends BUT you keep a BIG part of yourself intact.In this way relations between people, mariages,funerals, accidents will not bother you very much..
And about video gaming..I prefer 1000x times to play a single player video game than living the life that my parents and most normal people live..I prefer to die instead to live knowing that i was just a counter on a white board in a company or in society statistics..
So i make a compromise.I do what i like and i know that next day is mostly for me than money or i die...
Of course i will get many bad words, imature etc (neverending cliches) if from 50 people i make only 1 think a little more my time here to write this post wasn't in vain....
 

eyebyte

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I have a hard time believing that boys are showing a decrease in testosterone these days as I see far too many young guys in their early 20's with a seeming over abundance of the shit. They live, fight, and almost kill themselves because they seem to have too much of it.
 

disregard

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Girls are becoming more masculinized too, because they are expected to work, go to school, control their emotions, and celebrate sexual conquests.

I don't see any of this adriftness as the epidemic Sax claims it to be.. I find the change in gender roles very interesting and harmless.
 

Athenian200

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I'm not convinced it's a problem related to gender roles. I have seen increasing apathy and lack of motivation in people (I wonder if that means INTP's will begin to find it easier to relate to people?) I think that it's related to culture more than anything. Our lives are much easier than they used to be, so people don't have as strong a work ethic... they just don't need to do as much to get to the same level. Eventually it will get to the point that people don't do enough to keep society together, things will start to collapse, and then when they collapse far enough, life will get harder again, and the cycle will repeat. I think that's how it generally goes, actually.


Even if there are some sort of truths to be found in gender trends, I don't think that justifies codifying them as a standard for how to treat people of each gender (which could very easily happen if the trends cited have too much attention paid to them). There are going to be many kinds of exceptions to any "rule of thumb" you create. Even some who fit into one of the rules, but not the other, etc. Most people are too messy to be cleanly stuffed into one of two opposite categories. That's actually the main thing I've learned from MBTI... that the best way to deal with people is to be tolerant of the messiness of their individual trait allocations, and of the typical lack of consistency/predictability across different people (sometimes even within the same person with things like schizophrenia).
 

disregard

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I think that the shift of the accepted lifestyle of youths into one that is less physically active has made life a lot more comfortable for those that "live in their mind".
 

GZA

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Girls are becoming more masculinized too, because they are expected to work, go to school, control their emotions, and celebrate sexual conquests.
But is that really what masculine means? Work and school seem like universal things that everyone needs to/should do. Controlling emotions and sexual conquests are cultural things, and we do associate them with masculinity but I don't think they should be. Controlling your emotions... no matter how emotionally driven you are if you are healthy you should be able to control/express them appropraetely. Sexual conquests... don't men and women celebrate them for different reasons? Women seem to celebrate being attractive enough to have a very attractive mate while men celebrate being able to attract an attractive mate. I guess women are encouraged to be silent about their sexual conquests though... but I don't think a change in that is related to being masculinized personally. Even Dr. Sax's stuff is about how men and women are different and how current society is favouring women, not about how women are being changed to fit a male mold.
 

disregard

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By certain societies' standards, bringing home the bacon and being sexually immodest is masculine. I'm not saying it is masculine. I don't judge people that do those things as masculine, as I am one of them, but it was in the territory of the male gender, in my country half a century's past.
 

Hexis

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I feel the same as Eyebyte, but I dont think there is a problem exactly with lowered testosterone, just higher amounts PC BS that keeps kids from learning like they should because its unfair to treat people differently.
Not all men are born equal, but we try to raise and teach and discipline our kids with the opposite in mind.

And on another note I personally hate this BS about kids with ADHD and Bi-Polar disorder. Things that wherent even a problem until we threw PC BS into the mix. Kids are going to get hyper, THEIR FREAKEN KIDS. And a lot of women (and men with lower testosterone naturally) are going to have many mood shifts, THEIR NOT CRAZY!

Thats really all i have to say for the moment.
 

marm

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I have a hard time believing that boys are showing a decrease in testosterone these days as I see far too many young guys in their early 20's with a seeming over abundance of the shit. They live, fight, and almost kill themselves because they seem to have too much of it.

I know what you mean. I work in a parking ramp downtown of a college town that has a very large number of bars. There is no lack of aggressive male syndrome.

That said, Dr. Sax was saying that(based on research?) more effeminate guys are the ones most likely to do mass shootings for instance. Anti-social expressions of aggression may less to do directly with testosterone and more to do with simple frustration.. or drunkeness, or maybe just immaturity. You could point out that girls don't go homicidal as much as guys do. And I'd respond by saying that probably even guys with lower testosteone still have more testosterone than most girls.

Anyways, he claims that the research shows that testosterone levels have decreased. As I don't have the book, I can't say what research he is referring to. But here is a related article:

Significant Testosterone Decrease in Young Males Conceived through Fertility Treatment, Danish Study Shows
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/aug/07080304.html
 

CzeCze

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I'm not familiar with Dr. Sax but there are similar gurus, specialists, talking heads, etc. who blame the increase in soy products for the 1) effeminizing men and 2) causing cancer in women. Soy products supposedly increase estrogen levels. I have also heard similar to the China Syndrome that it's hormones in meat products that are causing women to have periods so early and develop so fast.

Girls develop physically (notice I didn't say mentally or otherwise) almost at a scary rate these days which seems to coincide with the number of pedophilic and 'under-aged' fetishists and predators -- at least if you look at 'To Catch a Predator'. :dry: Perhaps these men are all just emotionally and mentally stunted and at the psychic level of a 13 year old so can't be blamed. :dry:

I'm suprised no one has mentioned the monumental effects of a capitalist culture on growing up. I'm not even 30 yet, but "when I was a kid" we didn't have a lot of tv shows catering to us outside of Sat. morning cartoons, music, (unless you count Disney Rock), movies, and not a lot of new fangled interwebs and cel. phones.

Then some smart marketers realized that while kids might not have a lot of money, they had almost unlimited discretionary funds in way of their parents and guardians. And marketers milk this for everything the parents have. Look at the insane price of Hannah Montana tickets, trendy disposable cel. phones, and have you seen 'My Sweet Sixteen' on MTV??

A lot of adults coddle children and pretend they are adults to make the child-ego feel better and make the adult feel more liked (reminds me of the 'Parent or Friend' thread) Almost like buying their kids affection or at least keeping them quiet.

I think this coincided not with any diets or toxins in the air, but the growing bank statements of corporations, tv networks, music labels, etc. I mean, there is A LOOOOOT of money to be made from creating and sustaining a nationa of man-children and wimmin-children. And they totally play off the insecurities and needs of parents.
 

marm

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CzeCze,

You're theory versus Dr. Sax's would be easy enough to test. According to you, it should be the same for boys and girls. According to Dr. Sax, it should be very different.

Here is one piece of evidence that he put forth, but I don't remember what it was based on. He claimed that there is an equal number of young women and young men choosing to live at home with their parents. Even so, there was a significant difference. Most of the young women had goals such as starting a business or getting further schooling, and their were fewer young men with goals. Furthermore, the young women were achieving their goals. In connection with this, he brought up that there is a growing number of men who neither have jobs nor are looking for jobs.

To know if Dr. Sax's theory is true, we'd have to look at the research. If anyone is familiar with the research in this area, please bring it up.

Its my opinion that their is something changing. I see no reason that physiological factors and cultural factors can't both be causes in this phenomena. I didn't hear Dr. Sax mention capitalism per se, but he does speak of cultural factors as being important.

By the way, I think your comment about pedophilia is right on. There are many problems with this whole situation. Girls are maturing younger and yet women are marrying later. Adding to that boys being stunted in their development creates quite a challenge for our society. Obviously, traditional morality is ill-fitted to deal with the situation.

Its interesting to note that Dr. Sax does believe that traditional cultures might come to the forefront because of this gender confusion. He says this isn't because people want clear answers, but rather because the cultures that emphasize family will simply outgrow the rest of society.
 
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