You may know the alarming statistics and trends stemming from the War on American Boys and Men, but let's review them again:

-In 1979, 49 percent of college students were male.  This has now dropped to 42 percent.

-Males are significantly less likely to finish college than females.

-Boys are several times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and to be put on drugs unnecessarily.

-Fourth-grade boys are doing slightly better in reading and writing than 20 years ago, but twelfth-grade boys are doing worse.

-Girls have always read for fun more than boys, but this gender gap has widened considerably over the last 25 years.

-The onset of puberty is now much earlier in girls but later in boys, as late as the age of 15 and 16 in an increasing number of cases.

-Compared to 30 years ago, boys are three times more likely to be born with genital abnormalities, and young men now have lower testosterone levels than their grandfathers had.

-Boys now appear to be more feminine in both behavior and brain chemistry than previous generations.

-Twenty-two percent of men between the ages of 35 and 40 have never been married, versus only eight percent a quarter-century ago.

-There has been a dramatic rise in the percent of able-bodied men who choose not to work and/or to sponge off of parents.  Also, on average, men have become less industrious and driven than women.

Remarkably, these trends are not headline news and are not issues in the presidential campaign.

What accounts for these trends?

Answers can be found in the sobering book, Boys Adrift:  The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men, by Leonard Sax, M.D., PhD., published in 2007.

If the premises and findings in the book are only half right, that is more than enough reason to make this a national issue and priority.  However, the author appears to be mostly right.  In searching the Web for opposing scientific opinions about the book, I have not found anything meaningful to date.

Dr. Sax gives five causes of the trends.  Note that contrary to the conventional wisdom, a lack of economic opportunity is not one of them.

1. Video Games:  Obviously, an inordinate amount of time spent playing video games is time not spent on more productive pursuits, such as academics, athletics, and the old-fashioned tinkering and building that boys used to do with tools and materials. More worrisome, there is considerable evidence that hardcore "gamers" are prone to behavioral problems and changes in brain circuitry, resulting in a lack of motivation for other activities and a disconnection from the real world.

2. Teaching Methods:  Modern pedagogical theory runs counter to how boys learn, and schools have eliminated opportunities for boys to express their natural competitiveness and need for physical rough-and-tumble.

3. Prescription Drugs:  Boys increasingly have been prescribed and overprescribed psychotropic drugs for ADHD, such as Ritalin, Adderall, Dexedrine, Concerta, and Metadate.  Boys might show temporary improvements in concentration while on the drugs, but when they come off the drugs, they can be listless and even violent. 

4. Environmental Toxins:  There is growing evidence that chemical substances in the environment are contributing to ADHD, effeminate behavior, and a lack of motivation in boys.  One suspected substance is phthalates, a plasticizer found in plastic water bottles and microwavable food.

5. The Larger Culture:  Societal elites and intellectuals seem to have a bias against masculinity or think that there are no innate difference between men and women.  Wrongheaded public policy and education policy have been the result.  This problem has been exacerbated by the rise in single-mother families, where boys are left without positive male role models—and without guidance from a larger community of men on what it means to be a gentleman. Unlike many other cultures, the USA no longer has formal traditions to help boys make the transition to manhood. Boys learn the opposite of what it means to be a man from video games, from action figures, from sports thugs, and from pop culture.  

Regarding the last point, I am so blessed and lucky to have had working-class parents who scrimped and sacrificed to send me to an all-boys Catholic high school with a mostly male faculty.  It had a curriculum and school culture based on the Latin motto, Esto Vir, or Be a Man.  That didn't mean a macho man.  It meant a moral, civilized, cultured, learned, and accomplished man.

Yeah, I didn't make the grade in all cases, but at least I know the difference.  Would I have known the difference if my parents had sent me into the maw of the one-dress-fits-all public school monopoly dominated by female teachers?  I don't know, but I honor them for hedging their bets.