What is Happening to Our Sons?

Are you concerned about the sons in your community and our society in general?

Would an overview of the problem be helpful?

I am the youngest of four siblings and have three older brothers. I have two sons and a daughter. Now, I have four grandsons. So naturally, the topic of boys and how we can best help them navigate the world interests me. I hope you agree, especially regarding substance use and other problems.

As I’ve talked to families, I’ve noticed that more moms reach out with concerns about their sons than their daughters.

For example, 64% of the parents I’ve worked with have sons struggling with substance use. That is almost double the number of parents I hear from with concerns about their daughters.

“Men are more likely than women to use almost all types of illicit drugs, and illicit drug use is more likely to result in emergency department visits or overdose deaths for men than for women. For most age groups, men have higher rates of use or dependence of illicit drugs and alcohol than do women.” – National Institute on Drug Abuse,

Why are so many of our sons struggling?

Unfortunately, young men are more involved with drug use, guns, and violence, including school shootings. They are more likely to commit suicide as well. Yet, many of these young men have sisters who grew up in the same household and are not having these same problems.

Struggling teens and young men often have low self-esteem and social problems.

Fewer young men are graduating from college or high school these days. They are more likely to be victims of child abuse, significant violence, sexual assault, and domestic violence.

There are many causes, but one of the main ones is that these young men do not have an involved dad living in the home.

Dad deprived sons

The lack of a father figure leads to problems for both girls and boys, but boys are even more at risk. When a child does not grow up with a dad, he loses half of his identity and carries that loss throughout his life. It affects all his experiences and relationships.

“Dad-deprived boys had less guidance for alternative senses of purpose. Many boys experienced a “purpose void.” Boys externalize and “act out” their fear of not measuring up with drugs, drinking, and delinquency, or by emotionally withdrawing.” ~ Warren Farell

When there isn’t a dad at home, it is more difficult for moms to enforce boundaries. Children tend more often to do what they want rather than what they need to do. When boys have poorly enforced boundaries, they can have poor impulse control. It feeds into the inability to handle postponed gratification and an ever-shortening attention span.

“The discipline of postponing gratification is the single most important discipline your son needs.”– Warren Farrell

A child with unclear boundaries learns they can still be negotiated and develops his negotiating skills. The child realizes he can exhaust his mother and get his way. Warren Farrell states:

“This second path is most frequently characterized by the exhausted mom finally yelling in frustration, ‘I said no!’ The child then continues to press. The mom loses it and creates a punishment too big for the crime; then, feeling guilty, she fails to follow through on the anger-generated punishment, and in an effort to beg forgiveness, she bends over backward to please the child. The child soon detects exactly what worked to manipulate the mom into bending over backward and giving more than what was even asked for in the first place, and thus hones his or her art for the next iteration of the ‘cycle of the unenforced boundary.'”–Warren Farrell

The impact

The impact of not having an involved dad is significant for boys during their childhood, teenage years, and throughout their lives.

Some women choose to be single moms. Overall, they have fewer problems than children of divorce. Yet they will struggle more often with delinquency, substance use, and depression (even when controlling for socioeconomic variables).

“For example, they are twice as likely as children living with both mom and dad to have problems with the law before age twenty-five, more than two and a half times as likely to struggle with substance abuse, and slightly more likely to experience problems with depression and mental health.” – Warren Farrell

Drug use

While there are no guarantees, having an involved father is more likely to help prevent drug use. It turns out that a father’s involvement is more important than being close to a parent, boundaries, parent trust, or strictness. An involved father is more influential than a child’s gender, ethnicity, or social class.

“Fatherless children are at a dramatically greater risk of drug and alcohol abuse.”– U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. National Center for Health Statistics. Survey on Child Health. Washington, DC, 1993.

“There is significantly more drug use among children who do not live with their mother and father.” – Hoffmann, John P. “The Community Context of Family Structure and Adolescent Drug Use.” Journal of Marriage and Family 64 (May 2002): 314-330

What about divorce?

The Compassion Antidote — My book answers many of the questions readers of this post may have – including how to help their child find recovery compassionately. Click on the book for more information. I hope you find it helpful.

Many people have experienced divorce, myself included. So how do you help your children, especially your son, when a divorce occurs?

After a divorce, children do best when they share equal time with their parents.

Interestingly, what Warren Farrel found was that this arrangement can help:

“Dads and moms have equal amounts of positive engagements with daughters; dads have more than moms with their sons.”

The best outcome for kids is when they have equal time with both parents, whether their parents are married or divorced. So this means mom is not a substitute for a dad. Money is not a substitute for a dad. Another man is not a substitute for a dad.

In conclusion:

“The boy crisis cannot be solved, then, without addressing the most important single crisis in developed countries: dad-deprived children, and especially dad-deprived boys.” ~ Warren Farrell

I found the book, The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It by Warren Farrell, PhD, and John Gray, PhD to be helpful in understanding what is happening to some of our sons.

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