Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #775 Failure to Launch: Why Boys Become Unmotivated

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#775 Failure to Launch: Why Boys Become Unmotivated · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families Podcast.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: It's the podcast for the time poor parent who just
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: want answers.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Now good. This is doctor Justin Colson. Welcome to the
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  Speaker 1: Happy Families Podcast. Last week we interviewed Julie Lithcott Haims.
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  Speaker 1: She's going to be in our upcoming Happy Family's teen Summit.
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  Speaker 1: More details to come soon. Today I've decided to give
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  Speaker 1: you a sneak peek into someone else who is going
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  Speaker 1: to be in the summit, who is just extraordinary. His
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  Speaker 1: name is doctor Lendard Sachs. He's a family physician GP
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  Speaker 1: an MD, but he's also got a PhD in psychology.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, this guy has done kind of everything, written
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  Speaker 1: a bunch of New York Times bestselling books, Wide Gender Matters,
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  Speaker 1: Boys Adrift, Girls on the Edge, and The Collapse of Parenting.
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  Speaker 1: That was the New York Times bestseller that he had.
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  Speaker 1: Most recently, he's been a guest all over TV and
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  Speaker 1: media right around the world. He's written like so much
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  Speaker 1: stuff academically, and he's going to be joining us for
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  Speaker 1: the upcoming Happy Families teen Summit. But I wanted to
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  Speaker 1: give you a sneak peek because this teen Summit is
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  Speaker 1: going to be so darn good. Julian Live Gotjeyms. We
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  Speaker 1: talked to her last week. Dr Sachs today we begin
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  Speaker 1: our conversation talking about his book Boys Adrifts, and the
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  Speaker 1: focus of that book, how teen boys all around the
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  Speaker 1: world are struggling with the challenges of modern life.
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  Speaker 2: It's not just one factor, it's at least five factors,
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  Speaker 2: and the factors are unrelated to one another. It's a
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  Speaker 2: perfect storm of unrelated factors coming together to create this
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  Speaker 2: growing proportion of boys who are disengaged. But what's really
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  Speaker 2: new is that the many of the boys aren't bothered,
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  Speaker 2: some are, Some have the senset boy, something's not right here.
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  Speaker 2: I shouldn't be living in my parents' home at twenty
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  Speaker 2: eight years of age. But you know, way back in
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  Speaker 2: two thousand and six, there was a movie came out
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  Speaker 2: called Failure to Launch, starting Matthew McConaughey as a handsome, funny,
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  Speaker 2: friendly young man in his early thirties who's not really
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  Speaker 2: working and not looking for work and living in his parents' home.
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  Speaker 2: And I wrote a commentary about that movie because I said, look,
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  Speaker 2: I know why this movie is so popular. It was
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  Speaker 2: unexpectedly the number one movie in the United States. It
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  Speaker 2: didn't have a big budget, didn't have big marketing, but
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  Speaker 2: was ruled the charts for weeks. I said, I know why.
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  Speaker 2: I know why this movie is so popular because we
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  Speaker 2: all know someone like this, a young man who could
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  Speaker 2: be doing could be doing a lot, and he's not.
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  Speaker 2: He's not motivated to and that's why this movie has
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  Speaker 2: really struck a chord. I claimed. So. My commentary is
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  Speaker 2: published in the Washington Post. It was the first article
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  Speaker 2: I've ever written that truly went viral. It was picked
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  Speaker 2: up by fifty two newspapers across the United States. I
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  Speaker 2: was interviewed on National Public Radio for forty minutes. In
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  Speaker 2: the studio, I got over two thousand emails over the
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  Speaker 2: next few weeks, and I ended up devoting a chapter
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  Speaker 2: of the book I was writing at the time, the
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  Speaker 2: first edition of Boys Adrift, to all the emails I got,
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  Speaker 2: because they were really interesting. From girlfriends, wives, mothers, but
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  Speaker 2: also from the young men themselves, many of whom said, Hey,
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  Speaker 2: get off my back. There's more than one way to
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  Speaker 2: be human. We don't all have to be this hard
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  Speaker 2: working entrepreneur striving to get ahead. What's wrong with spending
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  Speaker 2: most of my time in my bedroom playing video games
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  Speaker 2: and it was really striking. I included some of those
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  Speaker 2: emails in the chapter as well, because the notion that
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  Speaker 2: old people by which I mean people over thirty five
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  Speaker 2: have about what makes a good life are not shared
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  Speaker 2: by some younger people. The assumption that if you're not disabled,
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  Speaker 2: you should be working to earn a living is an
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  Speaker 2: assumption that is not shared by a significant chunk of
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  Speaker 2: men under thirty Right.
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  Speaker 1: Now, obviously, we've got a whole raft of reasons that,
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  Speaker 1: as you said, you've got on the cover of this book,
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  Speaker 1: and the book is primarily about But I wonder if
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  Speaker 1: we can talk about why that is and why there's
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  Speaker 1: a gender discrepancy. Why is it that the boys feel
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  Speaker 1: that way but the girls don't.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, If anything, the girls have gone to the other extreme.
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  Speaker 2: The girls are anxious and concerned and feel that whatever
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  Speaker 2: they're doing it's not enough. They need to do more.
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  Speaker 2: There's been a tremendous rise in anxiety and depression across
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  Speaker 2: Australia and New Zealand, as there has been across the
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  Speaker 2: United States and Canada, as there has been across Western Europe.
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  Speaker 2: Tremendous rise in anxiety and depression among girls. And in
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  Speaker 2: my own practice, you know, as a family, I can
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  Speaker 2: tell you about a family where the parents are very
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  Speaker 2: concerned about their son who is a goofball, who's not
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  Speaker 2: working hard and isn't concerned about his poor marks at school.
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  Speaker 2: And the parents are very concerned about that. But I
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  Speaker 2: also know the daughter, and the daughter is having trouble
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  Speaker 2: sleeping at night. She's anxious. She's worried about where she's
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  Speaker 2: going to university, whether her parents will be able to
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  Speaker 2: afford university. But she's getting good marks, and she has
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  Speaker 2: lots of friends. But she's secretly cutting herself with razor
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  Speaker 2: blades because cutting herself with leaves the anxiety, and parents
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  Speaker 2: don't even know this is happening. She cuts herself on
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  Speaker 2: her upper inner thigh, whether parents don't look or see.
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  Speaker 2: Both these kids are struggling, but they're struggling in very
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  Speaker 2: different ways. The boy, he's perfectly happy. You know, I'm
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  Speaker 2: a psychologist, I have a family doctor. As near as
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  Speaker 2: I can tell, this boy is very happy with his
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  Speaker 2: sixty five inch flat screen and his pornography and his
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  Speaker 2: online video games. His sister is miserable, she's anxious, she's depressed.
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  Speaker 2: Both these kids are struggling. Neither of these kids are flourishing,
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  Speaker 2: but the parents aren't really seeing the girls distress because
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  Speaker 2: on the surface, everything's fine. She's earning good marks, she
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  Speaker 2: has lots of friends. They don't even know about the cutting.
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  Speaker 2: So girls are struggling, boys are struggling, but they're struggling
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  Speaker 2: in very different ways.
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  Speaker 1: It also sounds like there's a different level of a win.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, you're saying that the boys are struggling, but
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  Speaker 1: the boys are struggling according to us, not according to them.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, that's a good way of summarizing it.
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  Speaker 1: Whereas the girls are struggling according to them, but perhaps
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  Speaker 1: not according to us.
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  Speaker 2: That's right, well, and that reflects the you know, I'll
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  Speaker 2: be very blunt when I do presentations. So the Peel
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  Speaker 2: District School Board in Mississaugo WHI she's just outside Toronto, Ontario, Canada,
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  Speaker 2: hired me to lead a workshop on Boys a Drift
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  Speaker 2: and Girls on the Edge. For Boys a Drift, we
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  Speaker 2: sold out the venue, the Living Arts Center in Mississauga,
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  Speaker 2: which she's two hundred and fifty. Even though they charged
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  Speaker 2: one hundred dollars apiece to attend. We sold out. Had
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  Speaker 2: we had a waiting list for the Girls on the Edge.
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  Speaker 2: We only sold about half. We filled half the house.
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  Speaker 2: There's much less interest in anxious girls than there are
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  Speaker 2: in lazy boys.
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  Speaker 1: Fascinating when I have a conversation like this, especially with
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  Speaker 1: somebody like yourself, Leonard. There are three questions that I'm
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  Speaker 1: interested in answering, and what I've discovered is people have
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  Speaker 1: an area of strength in answering them, but nobody really
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  Speaker 1: covers all three particularly well. I sense this might be
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  Speaker 1: different with you. The three questions are what, why, and
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  Speaker 1: how So the what we've already sort of covered off
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  Speaker 1: a little bit. The what is We've got a different
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  Speaker 1: way of responding to the world betweens and girls. Boys
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  Speaker 1: are pretty happy with their lives but aren't really going anywhere.
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  Speaker 1: They're not particularly productive, And again we're speaking generally. There
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  Speaker 1: are many boys who are amazing over old.
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  Speaker 2: Well, and also there are many boys who are not happy.
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  Speaker 2: I just spoke in Lone Tree, Colorado, where a fourteen
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  Speaker 2: year old boy took his own life because he wasn't
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  Speaker 2: happy with the way things are going, So I don't
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  Speaker 2: want to generalize there. Again, there are many boys who
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  Speaker 2: are perfectly happy, not achieving and living off their parents.
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  Speaker 2: But there are some boys who are deeply distressed and
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  Speaker 2: some who are suicidal. But I also want to add
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  Speaker 2: part of that, what is this growing gender gap in
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  Speaker 2: achievement that's not just in mindset. You look across university
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  Speaker 2: who earned a university qualification in Australia last year, you
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  Speaker 2: find that women outnumbered men by fifty nine to forty one.
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  Speaker 2: That's a huge change compared with fifty years years ago
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  Speaker 2: when men outnumbered women at university in Australia. And I've
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  Speaker 2: done this presentation across Australia and in New Zealand, and
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  Speaker 2: in England and in Scotland using British data, Australia data,
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  Speaker 2: a Kiwi data, whatever, because all these countries it's very
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  Speaker 2: easy to pull up these numbers and then people will say, well,
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  Speaker 2: why does it matter. Fifty years ago women outnumbered men
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  Speaker 2: at university and nobody was too excuse me. Fifty years
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  Speaker 2: ago men outnumbered women at university, no one was concerned
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  Speaker 2: about it. Now women outnumbered men at university by about
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  Speaker 2: the same proportion. Why should we care? And I've got
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  Speaker 2: a good answer. Actually, it's three words that the researchers
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  Speaker 2: have come up with. Those three words are educational assortative mating.
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  Speaker 2: What the researchers mean by that is that if a
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  Speaker 2: woman has earned a four year qualification at university, and
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  Speaker 2: if she's going to marry a man, she has a
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  Speaker 2: number of qualifications in mind for her husband. But it
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  Speaker 2: turns out but educational attainment is very important to her.
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  Speaker 2: She is looking for a man who has equal or
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  Speaker 2: greater educational attainment. That was not true fifty years ago.
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  Speaker 2: Fifty years ago, if a man was going to marry
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  Speaker 2: a woman, he might have a number of qualifications in
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  Speaker 2: mind for his bride, but it turns out that educational
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  Speaker 2: attainment was not one of them. If she was pretty,
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  Speaker 2: that would pretty much take care of it. Fifty years ago,
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  Speaker 2: the executive would marry his secretary. But today, if a
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  Speaker 2: woman's an executive, she's not going to marry the man
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  Speaker 2: who's serving her coffee. She's not. She's looking for a
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  Speaker 2: man who has equal or greater educational attainment. And there
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  Speaker 2: are not enough men, not enough good men to go around.
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  Speaker 2: And this is true not only of university educated women,
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  Speaker 2: this is true across the board. So again, I'm a
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  Speaker 2: family doctor in my own practice. A woman I know well,
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  Speaker 2: I've known since she was a little girl, but this
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  Speaker 2: story takes place she's about twenty two years old. I said, Lauren,
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  Speaker 2: I bumped into breath the other day, and he's just
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  Speaker 2: going on and on about how great you are, and
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  Speaker 2: how funny you are and how beautiful you are. And
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  Speaker 2: he said, he's asked you to marry him twice. Lauren,
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  Speaker 2: why don't you want to marry the father of your
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  Speaker 2: two kids? And she said, doctor Sex, I already got
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  Speaker 2: two babies at home. I don't need a third. If
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  Speaker 2: a woman's going to marry a man, she's looking for
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  Speaker 2: a man who has equal or greater achievement ambition as
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  Speaker 2: what she has. And there are not enough good men
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  Speaker 2: to go around. And this is driving the rapid decline
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  Speaker 2: in the marriage rate that we observe across Australia, New Zealand, Canada,
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  Speaker 2: the United States, and indeed across Europe. There are not
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  Speaker 2: enough good men to go around. That's why it matters,
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  Speaker 2: That's what. That's the what.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, this ties back into the WAD, and that is
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  Speaker 1: we've got boys who are just not They're failing to
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  Speaker 1: as you said, failing to launch, failing to thrive. Recognizing
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  Speaker 1: that some are doing great, but over always seeing this
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  Speaker 1: distinctive pattern across nations in the West. So that's the
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  Speaker 1: what now. I guess what I'd love to do as
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  Speaker 1: we explore this conversation is unpack the why, which very
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  Speaker 1: few people do well, and then talk a bit about
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  Speaker 1: the how. In other words, how do we move forward?
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  Speaker 1: There are a couple of other watts that I want
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  Speaker 1: to touch on before we get there.
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  Speaker 2: Though.
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  Speaker 1: When I initially contacted you, it was under the inspiration
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  Speaker 1: of a marketing campaign. It's a pr campaign from Mabeling,
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  Speaker 1: one of the major makeup companies globally. They got a
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  Speaker 1: couple of boys, well not boys, a couple of men
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  Speaker 1: with big followings on Twitch and Twitter and Tumblr and whatever.
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  Speaker 1: I don't know, all the different social media is a
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  Speaker 1: whole lot of these guys. They sat down, they put
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  Speaker 1: their headsets on so that they could do some games,
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  Speaker 1: but using technology, their voices were turned into female voices,
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  Speaker 1: and they joined the games, and they had an opportunity
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  Speaker 1: to feel the way it feels when you're or a
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  Speaker 1: girl playing in a man's world. I guess now, these
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  Speaker 1: guys were not particularly surprised by what had happened. They
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  Speaker 1: didn't act like they were shocked because they've played the
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  Speaker 1: games and they've heard all these kinds of things, but
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  Speaker 1: I get the sense that they felt it for the
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  Speaker 1: first time. They felt what it must have been like
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  Speaker 1: for a girl trying a game and being insulted, being
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  Speaker 1: sworn at, being ignored, being targeted and shot. These guys
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  Speaker 1: are very, very good at the game, but they had
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  Speaker 1: a horrible experience, and it was a wonderful empathy thing.
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  Speaker 1: The reason I wanted to talk to you is not
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  Speaker 1: only are we dealing with a gender gap in motivation
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  Speaker 1: and productivity, an a gender gap in terms of academic
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  Speaker 1: achievement and desire for excellence, but we're dealing with I'm
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  Speaker 1: going to just call it what I see it as
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  Speaker 1: misogyny and abuse, particularly in the online world, from males
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  Speaker 1: directed specifically to females, at a level that seems to
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  Speaker 1: me unprecedented. It's like the accessibility, in the anonymity and
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  Speaker 1: the all pervasiveness of the online world has just accelerate
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  Speaker 1: what's going on here. And I'd love to have you
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  Speaker 1: talked a bit more about the what around that. Why
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  Speaker 1: is it that pornography is such a problem, the gaming
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  Speaker 1: is such a problem, and that boys are thinking it's
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  Speaker 1: okay to behave like this, what is going on here?
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  Speaker 1: And maybe a little bit of why so.
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  Speaker 2: I wrote another book called The Collapse of Parenting. In
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  Speaker 2: the first chapter of that book is called the Culture
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  Speaker 2: of Disrespect. The Culture of Disrespect, where I assert that
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  Speaker 2: really worldwide Anglophone culture has become a culture of disrespect,
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  Speaker 2: by which I mean a culture in which it's considered
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  Speaker 2: funny to be disrespectful to others. Boys are not born
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  Speaker 2: knowing what it means to be gentlemen. They have to
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  Speaker 2: be taught, and we no longer teach them, and so
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  Speaker 2: they looked at the marketplace, and the marketplace has changed.
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  Speaker 2: A generation ago, the most popular hit songs, the most
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: popular television shows taught boys that a good man is courteous, respectful. Today,
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  Speaker 2: boys are immersed in the culture of YouTube and TikTok videos,
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  Speaker 2: where the most popular men I'm talking now about artists
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  Speaker 2: like Drake, Bruno Mars and Lil nase X, who I
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: see are almost as popular in Australia as they are
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  Speaker 2: in the United States, are relentlessly disrespectful and address women
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  Speaker 2: using language that we cannot use here and boasting about
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  Speaker 2: being disrespectful to women. Bruno Mars earn six Grammys, which
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: is the highest award of recurring artists can earn in
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: the United States, earn six Grammys for his song That's
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  Speaker 2: what I Like, where he's addressing a woman he doesn't know,
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  Speaker 2: asking her to turn around and drop it for a
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  Speaker 2: player in return for money. He's offering money for sex
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  Speaker 2: for a woman to have sex with him, and this
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  Speaker 2: earned six Grammys, including the Grammy for Best Song. You know.
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  Speaker 2: Imagine a man in the workplace approaching a female colleague
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  Speaker 2: and saying, hey, baby girl, what's happening, which is quoting
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: from the song, and then offering her money for sex. Well,
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  Speaker 2: he'd be fired, or if he's lucky, he'd be allowed
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: to keep his job on condition that he attend a
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  Speaker 2: workshop where he would learn that addressing a young woman
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  Speaker 2: as you and your blank is objectification and never permitted,
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: that offering a woman money for sex is unacceptable.
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  Speaker 1: But he might.
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  Speaker 2: Recently respond that's what Bruno Mars did in his song,
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  Speaker 2: and he's had two billion views on his YouTube video,
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  Speaker 2: number one hit song and six Grammys the Best Song.
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  Speaker 2: How should a young man know? If he's received no instruction?
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  Speaker 2: Boys like girls are not by nature good, and here
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  Speaker 2: we dig into something that I think is profound. The
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  Speaker 2: Western tradition, by which I mean the tritiradition we trace
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: back to the Greeks, the Romans, and the Hebrews recognize
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: that people are an easily flawed and that if we
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: don't govern ourselves and have systems in place to govern
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  Speaker 2: our evil impulses, bad things will happen.
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  Speaker 1: For the House and the whys of boys being adrift,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: and a whole lot more. You will need to sign
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: up for the Happy Family's upcoming teen Summit. The name
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: will be revealed soon. The summit will be available soon,
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: but for now wait, just letting you know it's coming
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: and there are going to be some incredible people like
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: doctor Leonard Sachs and like Julie Lithcotteims and the list
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: just keeps on getting better and better. I'll tell you
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: more about it soon. All the details and the interview
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: in full coming up soon with this Happy Family's teen Summit.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: Keep your ear out for it. I'll let you know
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: as soon as I can. The Happy Families podcast is
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: produced by Justin Rawan, from which Media. Craig Bruce is
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: our executive producer. For more about making your family happier.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: Visit us at happyfamilies dot com, dot you, and keep
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: your eyes peeled for the Happy Family's Teens Summit not
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: far away.