October 29, 2024 • 57 mins
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Join us for a thought-provoking conversation with Dr. Leonard Sax, a renowned expert in psychology and family medicine, who challenges the status quo on gender identity and parenting in today's ever-changing world. Dr. Sax shares his experiences with being canceled by public schools due to his views on transgender issues and offers a critical perspective on the American Academy of Pediatrics' guidelines for pediatric gender transition. Dive into the updates in his book, The Collapse of Parenting, and explore the new chapter that tackles the rise of transgender identity among children—a topic previously unaddressed in earlier editions.
Our discussion ventures into the effects of social media on youth mental health. We contrast biblical parenting philosophies with modern permissive styles, and you'll discover why authoritative parenting is backed by evidence to produce happier and healthier children. The episode also introduces the concept of "normophobia," exploring how societal pressures towards non-conformity are reshaping young minds, particularly in English-speaking countries.
Finally, we guide parents through navigating educational and cultural landscapes that may conflict with their values. Dr. Sax shares insights on the importance of choosing schools that align with one's beliefs. We emphasize the crucial role parents play as primary educators of their children, particularly in areas of faith and morals, offering strategies to instill resilience and confidence in navigating today's complex cultural dynamics.
Like what you hear in this episode? Be sure to listen to Episode 100 and 118 for more from Dr. Sax!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jordan Langdon (00:00):
Welcome back, parents.
Today we're tackling the issueof why gender matters and the
confusion our kids areexperiencing when they witness
their neighbor, friends or theirpeers identifying as the
opposite sex.
And you know, in my opinionthere's no one more qualified to
talk about this than our numberone fan favorite and expert, dr
(00:23):
Leonard Sax.
So welcome back to the show, DrSax.
Dr. Leonard Sax (00:26):
Thanks for inviting me.
Jordan Langdon (00:27):
Dr Sax, I've been a fan of yours for years
and I personally understand youreducation and experience in
this space, but can you justshare with our audience a little
bit about your education andprofessional experience that
truly makes you an expert inthis field?
Dr. Leonard Sax (00:42):
Well, sure?
So I attended public schools inOhio K-12.
I earned my undergraduatedegree in biology at MIT in
Cambridge Massachusetts.
I earned my doctorate inpsychology as my PhD in
psychology, as well as my MD mymedical degree at the University
of Pennsylvania.
I did a three-year residency infamily medicine at Lancaster
General Hospital in Lancaster,pennsylvania, and I have been a
(01:04):
medical doctor now for 38 yearsin the United States.
I have been board certified infamily medicine for 35 years, so
I am a family doctor.
But I started visiting schoolsin the United States in 2001.
I have now visited more than500 schools over the last 23
years.
I posted a link you can look atall my school visits from 2005
(01:25):
to the present.
When I started visiting schools,I really had a passion for
public schools because, as youknow, I'm a graduate of public
schools K-12, and I startedleading workshops for public
schools.
If you look at the early years2005 and 2006 and 2007 and 2008,
it was almost all publicschools, but I'm no longer
welcome at public schools.
If you look at recent years,it's all Catholic schools and
(01:46):
private schools and Protestantschools.
I can tell you some storiesabout that, about how I've
recently been canceled to publicschools if that interests you.
But yeah, I'm no longer welcome.
A few public charter schoolslike the Hillsdale schools will
still have me, but I haven'tspoken at a regular public
school in years like theHillsdale schools will still
have me, but I haven't spoken ata regular public school in
(02:07):
years.
Jordan Langdon (02:07):
Well, you have certainly been all over the
globe speaking, but lots ofschools in the United States as
well, and I do want to know alittle bit about why public
schools canceled you, becauseyour new book that just came out
this month, the Collapse ofParenting, the fully revised and
updated version, has thischapter and it just, oh my
goodness, it's titled Babies.
Dr. Leonard Sax (02:25):
So tell us about it that actually ties into
our topic today the transgenderissue.
So back in 2019, I had theprivilege of speaking at Helen
Keller Middle School in EasternConnecticut and early last year
2023, the superintendent reachedout and said you know, Dr.
Sax, we've been keeping recordson our professional development
for many years and when youspoke here in 2019, we got great
(02:48):
reviews from our teachers.
You got some of the highestmarks from our teachers for your
professional development.
We'd like to bring you back todo another workshop with our
teachers and to lead a sessionfor our parents and we'd like
you to do your talk for parentstitled TikTok Ate, my Daughter
and my Son Won't Stop PlayingVideo Games what Parents Need to
Know About Social Media andVideo Games.
And I said great.
So we wrote a contract and itwas all set up for me to speak
(03:10):
at Helen Keller Middle School inEastern Connecticut and they
prepared a flyer and sent out anemail to start promoting the
presentation for parents and aparent who had a and a parent
who had a transgender child, achild born a daughter, but who
had announced that this childwas now a boy, a trans boy.
(03:33):
The parent reached out to thesuperintendent and said well, I
googled this Leonard Sax and Isaw an interview he did on Megyn
Kelly where he said that thesegirls who say they're boys are
in most cases confused andmistaken and should not
transition to the male role.
And I don't want him to speak.
And the superintendent said allright, you're welcome to come
(03:54):
to the board meeting and presentyour petition.
So she came to the meeting ofthe school board and presented
her position and the board votedand, by a vote of nine to zero,
rejected her position and theboard voted, and by a vote of
nine to zero.
Jordan Langdon (04:05):
rejected her position Okay.
Dr. Leonard Sax (04:07):
Whereupon she reached out to the national
organization and an activist forthe national transgender
reached out to contacted thesuperintendent and said if you
bring Dr Sax to EasternConnecticut, you better hire a
lot of security, because we willbe there in force, we will have
(04:27):
bullhorns, we will have smokebombs, we will have stink bombs,
we regard Dr Sax as atransphobe and a bigot and we
will not allow him to speak inEastern Connecticut.
And the superintendent saidhe's not talking about gender,
he's talking about TikTok.
He's not even going to mentiontransgender.
And they said we don't care,he's a bigot and we will not
(04:48):
allow him to set foot in easternConnecticut.
And so I was canceled.
Jordan Langdon (04:54):
Wow, Dr Satt.
The threats and the fear of thetruth, I guess, really lights
people up.
And so you continue to speak atprivate schools and you're very
welcome at Christian schoolsand Catholic schools and Jewish
schools across the nation, andwe're so glad because one of the
things that we value about youand your speaking is all the
years of research that you havedone and the studying you've
(05:17):
done to support the facts here.
So let's dive into this chapterthat you added and included in
your book, the Collapse ofParenting, that is titled Babies
.
Dr. Leonard Sax (05:26):
So when the first edition of the Collapse of
Parenting came out gosh, it'snow more than eight years ago,
I'm glad to say it was a NewYork Times bestseller and the
publisher reached out and saidit's time for a new edition,
which I agree, because a lot ofthings have changed.
The first edition made nomention of transgender because
it really wasn't a thing when Iwas writing the previous edition
(05:49):
.
I mean, that was just in 2015.
It's not that long ago, butthis is really new.
It's all happened in a veryshort period of time.
No mention of transgender inthe first edition, but I felt we
need to discuss this in thesecond edition, even though I
wrote a whole other book calledwhy Gender Matters, which has a
whole lot.
Well, actually, the firstedition of why Gender Matters
doesn't have anything ontransgender because when I wrote
(06:10):
the first edition 20 years ago,that wasn't a thing.
You know, 30 years ago, exactly30 years ago, in 1994, the
American Psychiatric Associationraised the question how common
is transgender?
And they said it's so rare thatwe cannot estimate with any
accuracy, but we estimate it isroughly one in 30,000 men and
(06:33):
perhaps one in 100,000 women.
So we just this month got thelatest numbers the Youth Risk
Behavior Survey, a nationalsurvey, a very carefully
executed survey conducted by theCenters for Disease Control of
high school students in theUnited States, showing that just
over 3% of high school studentsnow say they are transgender
(06:55):
and an additional 2% say thatthey are non-binary, neither
male nor female.
So we've gone from fewer thanone in 10,000 adults saying
they're transgender to more thanthree in 100 high school
students saying they aretransgender in less than 30
years.
So in my book why GenderMatters?
Second edition, second edition Igo into a deep dive into why
(07:20):
that is so.
This first edition, as I said,doesn't address this, because 20
years ago it wasn't a thing.
But the second edition has 12chapters, the last four of which
are gender non-conforming,lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender and intersex, with apretty deep dive into what
happened in a short period oftime that so many kids are now
confused and drifting.
And the short answer, the shortsummary, is that kids are not
(07:42):
born knowing what it means tobeing a man or woman.
They have to be taught and ifwe don't teach them and we set
them adrift in a confusedculture, they will be confused.
That's the short version.
So the Collapse of Parenting isnot a book about gender.
I wrote a book about gender.
The Collapse of Parenting isnot that book but I felt I
(08:03):
needed to include a chapterabout this because the Collapse
of Parenting is not that book.
But I felt I needed to includea chapter about this because the
Collapse of Parenting is a bookabout parental authority and
what has happened that I thoughtis relevant is that in blue
states and in purple states likeColorado, there has been a
concerted effort to undermineparental authority and I share a
(08:23):
number of stories in that newchapter in the Collapse of
Parents where confused kids havetransitioned or have actively
been.
Teachers at their schools havetried to persuade children as
young as six, according to courtdocuments.
I describe how a teacher inPennsylvania tried to persuade a
(08:47):
six-year-old boy to transitionto being a girl without the
parents' knowledge or consent,and the parents, when they
learned of this, sued thedistrict and this case is in
court right now and the schooldistrict's response was that the
parents had no right to contestwhat the teacher was doing in
the school and that's why Ithought it was relevant to
include in a book about parentalauthority that there are now
(09:08):
school districts in Pennsylvania, which is not a blue state,
it's a purple state and it's myhome state.
You know and this district isnot far from my home where a
school district will in courtsay that a parent has no right
to any knowledge of what ateacher is doing in the first
grade classroom, that a teacherhas full right to tell the
(09:31):
six-year-old that you know whatyour parents think you're a boy,
but I think you're a girl and Ithink you should transition to
being a girl, and that there'snothing wrong with a teacher
doing that, and that the schooldistrict has the nerve to say
that in a court of law againstthe parents' will.
I think parents need to be ontheir guard.
I think parents need to beaware that public school
districts now are willing to saysuch a thing, that you need to
(09:52):
be on your guard, that schooldistricts are willing to do this
.
Your kid is perfectly fine,perfectly normal, goes into
school and this teacher, whohappens to have a transgender
kid, now has their own agendaand is setting out now to try to
persuade your kid that your sonshould be a girl.
That's really harmful and youneed to be on your guard.
You need to be aware, becauseyour kid has no problems.
(10:15):
But going to a school with ateacher with an agenda could
create problems for your kid.
Jordan Langdon (10:22):
Wow, I know, when I was reading that chapter
and I saw the blurb about.
You know the flyer that theparent put up inside the school.
Dr. Leonard Sax (10:30):
That the teacher put up inside the school
.
Jordan Langdon (10:32):
Oh, yes, you're right.
Dr. Leonard Sax (10:33):
Yes, the teacher put up a flyer in the
school said that if your parentdoesn't approve of your
transitioning, then I'm your momnow and this was a different
lawsuit, a different case.
But again, parents across theUnited States are waking up to
this concern that many of theseteachers who have this agenda
encouraging their kids inelementary school and middle
(10:53):
school to transition to theother sex without the parents
themselves, are left of center.
In California, in Massachusetts, in New Jersey, and they said I
feel stabbed in the back here.
My daughter has ADHD, she's onthe spectrum and she's
transitioning to the male roleand the school didn't even
notify me.
(11:14):
She's been identifying as a boyat school for six months and
the school didn't tell me I'mleft of center.
I'm a card carrying Democrat andthe school regards me as the
enemy.
Why?
I don't get this.
I'm a member of the ACLU.
Why am I regarded as the enemy?
And I thought these wereplaintive voices.
These are leftist center, aclumember, democratic parents who
(11:37):
are like why is this schoolregarding me as the enemy?
Because I'm the parent.
So I think it's important forparents to understand that,
unfortunately, many publicschools now have a default of
regarding parents as the enemy.
That's a problem and I thoughtthat's why, even though the
Collapse of Parenting is not abook about gender, I think we
(11:58):
needed a chapter about thistransgender issue in this book,
that parents need to be on theirguard, need to be aware.
Jordan Langdon (12:04):
Well, and that gives me hope and motivates me
as a parent of young children.
I have an 18-year-old, a12-year-old and a 10-year-old
and we are the authority of ourchildren and I think so many
times the culture can give usthis message that you know you
should just let your childchoose and you know they know
what's best for them.
They've been living in thisbody forever and you even say in
(12:24):
your book the idea that kidsare brought up to, you know,
just kind of question theiridentity and wait until they're
five, six or seven to determinethemselves whether they're male
or female or non-binary, likeyou said.
Dr. Leonard Sax (12:37):
So I just had the privilege this past Sunday
of preaching a sermon.
This was a first for me.
I have never before in my lifestood in the pulpit to preach a
Sunday morning sermon.
I'm not ordained, I've neverbeen to seminary, but Pastor
Kevin at Church of the Savior inWayne, pennsylvania, happens to
be a fan, has read all four ofmy books and invited me to
(12:58):
preach the sermon.
And of course he and I met andhe said if you preach the sermon
, what would you preach?
And I said I would preach onbiblical parenting and it would
be based on Deuteronomy, chaptersix, verse seven, which is
usually translated teach themdiligently to your children.
But I am a student of biblicalHebrew and I can tell you that's
not what the Hebrew says.
The Hebrew is v'shinantamlevanecha and I have an exegesis
(13:21):
of this passage.
In the collapse of parenting itwould be easy to say that in
biblical Hebrew the verb therewould be lamed, to teach.
But the verb is not lamed, theverb is shanein.
Shanein doesn't mean to teach,it means to chisel in stone.
It comes from the Hebrew rootshein, meaning tooth.
So a better translation ofv'shinantam levanecha,
(13:42):
deuteronomy, chapter 6, verse 7,would be something like incise
these laws in the hearts of yourchildren.
Inscribe or chisel these lawsin the hearts of your children.
And right alongside that I citea column from the New York
Times.
A longtime columnist for theNew York Times, jennifer Finney
Boylan, wrote a column onenlightened parenting in which
she asserts that enlightenedparenting means setting your
(14:04):
child free to discover forthemselves their own right and
wrong.
And if, in so doing, your childbecomes a stranger to you, then
so be it.
So that was my sermon this pastSunday, putting those two side
by side.
Biblical parenting isv'shinantam levetecha.
Incise these laws in the heartsof your children.
(14:25):
Biblical parenting is bothstrict and loving.
You set that alongsidecontemporary parenting that you
get from the New York Times andNational Public Radio.
Good parenting means lettingyour kids decide.
Let your kid discover forthemselves their own right and
wrong.
Well, it turns out that we havegood evidence.
We have the work of DanaBaumrand and other leading
(14:46):
parenting researchers that showus that the best parenting is
authoritative parenting.
It's strict and loving, inc.
National Public Radio.
Set your kid loose to discoverfor themselves their own right
(15:07):
and wrong is permissiveparenting, and the result is
kids who are anxious anddepressed and addicted to drugs
and alcohol.
We know this and again a greatdeal of my book, the Collapse of
Parenting.
Well, two chapters to beprecise is devoted to the
longitudinal cohort studiesshowing that parenting that is
strict and loving results inkids who are happy and healthy
(15:27):
and doing well.
Whereas the New York TimesNational Public Radio parenting
permissive parenting results inkids who are anxious and
depressed and much more likelyto be addicted to drugs and
alcohol, turns out that biblicalparenting is evidence-based
parenting and results in kidswho are happy and healthy and
doing well.
That was my sermon and Dr Kevinwas pleased and we had a good
(15:49):
result from the congregation.
Jordan Langdon (15:51):
Wonderful.
I love your references back tothe Bible.
I remember early on when Iinterviewed you and we were
talking about social media andphones and you referenced the,
our Father, and you said Jordan.
It says right there lead us notinto temptation.
As parents, we cannot tempt ourchildren into things that are
going to be terrible for them.
We have to be the yes, we haveto be the one that takes the
(16:13):
brunt of it for the child.
Where we give our kidspermission to say my parents are
rotten, they don't let me be onmy phone after eight o'clock,
right, it makes sense to me whyyou had be asked to give a
sermon.
So what else do we need to knowthat's going on out in our
culture regarding, you know,this gender confusion with kids
and kind of what we can do asparents to help our kids
(16:35):
understand the truth about theirgender.
Dr. Leonard Sax (16:37):
Well, I think the most important new finding
in the research has to do withsocial media.
You know my brand, if you like,is evidence-based,
evidence-based parenting, andall throughout my four books,
I'm always telling parents anyrecommendation I'm going to make
to you is based in evidence.
When I make a recommendation,I'm always going to show you the
scholarly research as well asmy clinical experience as a
(16:59):
family physician with threedecades of experience.
Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
So what do we know about socialmedia?
Well, certainly, the leadingresearcher there, Jean Twenge,
did this huge study back in 2019with her colleague, keith
Campbell, following over 200,000adolescents over time.
And on the X axis is time spenton social media, and on the Y
(17:21):
axis is the likelihood ofbecoming anxious or depressed,
and there's no rise in thattrend line until 30 minutes a
day.
And once you get beyond 30minutes a day, you see a pretty
linear rise going up and up and,up and up and up.
So how much time on socialmedia is too much time?
Based on that study, I wouldsay less than 30 minutes a day
is fine.
But that study was published in2019 based on data gathered in
(17:43):
2018, which means it's beforeTikTok.
So TikTok changed everythingand studies published since then
.
Now, in the TikTok era, there'sno safe amount of time.
The risk begins at time zero.
And I reached out to JeanTwenge last year and I said
you've seen all these newerstudies, there's no safe amount
(18:03):
of time.
And she responded to my emailand she said the evidence now
supports a total ban on socialmedia for all kids under 18
years of age.
And I said can I quote you?
And she said, yes, you mayquote me.
And so that's what I've beensharing with parents now a total
ban on social media for allkids under 18 years of age, with
(18:26):
parents now a total ban onsocial media for all kids under
18 years of age.
And I think I really, reallypush that for parents.
And so you know, a lot ofpeople have been buzzing about
John Haidt's big book, theAnxious Generation, which is
indeed a publishing phenomenon,you know, number one New York
Times bestseller top, on theAmazon bestseller list, top 10
every week since it waspublished back in March.
But there's one big thing thatJohn Haidt has overlooked.
(18:48):
So he's really big on pointingout that this rise in anxiety
and depression began withInstagram, began around 2010, 11
, 12.
And it's gotten worse sinceTikTok, and that's true.
But one thing that he overlooksis that it's only in the
English speaking world.
It's not true in Greece.
(19:08):
It's not true in Russia.
Kids in Greece and Russia arejust as likely to have
smartphones.
They're just as likely to be onsmartphones as kids in the
United States at 10, at 12, at14 years of age, but they're not
any more likely.
They're not.
The rise in anxiety anddepression has not been seen
outside the English-speakingworld, and I recently wrote an
article pointing this out.
(19:29):
And the new edition of theCollapse of Parenting because we
have the state and time for thenew edition.
It's a major focus of the newedition what's going on in the
English-speaking world.
So I think this is a majorproblem with John Hyde's book.
He believes that the bigproblem is in the device.
He thinks you need to take awaythe smartphone and I think he's
overlooking the culture.
(19:50):
John Haidt, with all duerespect, brilliant guy, great
book.
He's an atheist who lives inManhattan and he loves Manhattan
, and he's overlooking the toxicAmerican culture.
He loves American culture, heloves Manhattan and he's an
atheist.
He can't see it.
He doesn't regard it as aproblem, he lives in it, he
(20:12):
swims in it.
He doesn't see it as a problem.
I'm not an atheist and I don'tlive in Manhattan.
I see the atheist culture ofManhattan as a problem and he is
overlooking it.
And if you don't want to read mybook, the Class of Parenting,
that's fine.
Just Google my name andInstitute for Family Studies and
maybe maybe Jordan, you couldinclude a link to the article I
(20:32):
just wrote two weeks ago forInstitute for Family Studies
titled Toxic Culture or ToxicPhones.
Maybe it's Toxic Phones orToxic Culture.
The editor gave the title whereI begin by mentioning John
Hyde's book the AnxiousGeneration.
Then I link to the researchshowing that this rise in
anxiety and depression is notseen outside the
English-speaking world and Imake one of the central claims
(20:55):
in the new edition, which isthat the rise in anxiety and
depression and transgender,which have all occurred in the
last 15 years and are allconfined to the English-speaking
world, you don't see this risein transgender in Greece and
Russia.
Jordan Langdon (21:11):
You see it in the.
Dr. Leonard Sa (21:12):
English-speaking world.
It's due to this peculiarconfusion in the
English-speaking world.
What's going on in theEnglish-speaking world?
It's the culture of disrespect,it's the collapse of parenting.
And a third ingredient that wehaven't talked about yet and
it's very relevant to thistransgender issue normophobia,
(21:35):
normophobia, n-o-r-m-o-phobia,normophobia A term coined
earlier this year by MaryHarrington, just in time for me
to include it in the class ofparenting.
Before the book went to press,mary Harrington, writing in a
magazine called First Things,talked about how young people
(21:55):
today teens and young adultshave this new fear, and as soon
as I read her article I saidthat's the word I've been
looking for that describes whatI'm seeing in my interviews with
young people and in the officeas a family doctor.
So 15 years ago I wrote a bookcalled Girls on the Edge,
sharing what I was observing inthe office with the girls back
then talking about the late2000s.
(22:17):
Back then, girls in the late2000s wanted to be effortlessly
perfect.
That was the thing back thenand the book was well-received,
right.
The Atlantic magazine.
Caitlin Flanagan called it thebest book about girls and young
women in the United States today, very proud of that.
Then the publisher asked me towrite a new edition published
more recently and I found thatthings had really changed.
Girls today don't want to beeffortlessly perfect.
(22:40):
That's boring.
They don't want to be perfectat all.
You've got to be.
That's boring.
That's boring, boring, boring,boring.
Social media is teaching kids.
Are you neurotypical or are youneurodivergent?
Are you gender typical or areyou excuse me, are you gender
(23:00):
conforming or are you gendernon-conforming?
Who wants to be typical andconforming?
Typical and conforming areboring, lame, unimaginative.
You want to be non-conforming.
You want to be divergent.
The terms kids learn in thesocial media, the English
(23:25):
speaking world and MatthewCrawford had a great article on
this which I also cite.
On his sub-sack he says itincentivizes kids to be
pathological.
Social media in American popularculture now incentivizes kids
to think of themselves asnothing worse than being white
and straight.
That is like really bad.
White, straight and Christianis like the worst thing you can
(23:49):
be.
You've got to be something else.
Uh, so so being being queer isgood, being being bi is good,
being trans is excellent.
Um, so 50 years ago, cs Lewisno, it's not 50 years ago, it's
70 years ago CS Lewis wrote abook for children called the
Magician's Nephew, and in hisbook he said, the problem about
(24:13):
trying to make yourself stupiderthan you really are is that you
very often succeed.
You very often succeed and in myessay I say substitute more
anxious or more depressed forstupider and you begin to
understand what's happeningright now.
(24:34):
The problem with trying to makeyourself more anxious or more
depressed than you really are isthat you very often succeed.
Being normal is now lame andboring and unimaginative.
The collapse of parenting hasset kids adrift in a toxic a
newly toxic culture ofdisrespect and envy, in which
(24:56):
it's cool to be depressed andqueer and trans and anxious and
to present yourself as anxiousand depressed and trans.
But this is only true in theEnglish speaking world.
We don't find this outside theEnglish-speaking world.
So I also talked to parentsabout some medical terms,
(25:17):
vectors and causal agents.
So let's talk about malaria.
The Anopheles mosquito is thevector of malaria, but it's not
the causal agent of malaria.
The causal agent is amicroorganism called Plasmodium
falciparum.
You have to use a microscope tosee this little tiny
microorganism.
That's what actually causesmalaria.
(25:39):
The mosquito spreads Plasmodiumfalciparum, the microorganism
that causes malaria.
You won't get malaria unlessthe mosquito bites you.
So, yeah, you need to block themosquito, with mosquito netting
et cetera, but you don't needto worry about malaria if you
live in Colorado, because youdon't have the mosquitoes there.
You don't have the causal agentthere.
(26:01):
Without the causal agent, youwon't get the malaria.
They have phones in Greece andRussia, but those kids are not
transgender.
Those kids are not anxious anddepressed because they don't
have the causal agent.
The causal agent is the toxicAmerican culture.
We need to lock down the phonesand the social media in North
America, not because the phonesthemselves are evil, contrary to
(26:26):
John Haidt but because theculture has become evil.
And this is where John Haidt, Ithink, has missed something
really important the culture,this toxic culture of
transgender and normophobia, hasbecome really harmful.
And we do have to limit thephones and lock down the social
(26:46):
media because the phones aretransmitting this toxic culture.
The phones are like thatmosquito transmitting that toxic
culture, but the phonesthemselves are not the toxicity.
The toxicity is in the socialmedia and the toxic culture of
normophobia and transgenderism.
Jordan Langdon (27:04):
So that is so interesting to me and I would
agree with you.
I was just in Greece onvacation last year and I really
did not see the same types ofthings with children over there,
matter of fact at all.
I didn't see this confusion inthe way they dressed or
identified or anything.
I didn't see any evidence ofthat.
But I'm a little bit naiveabout social media.
I guess I figured people inGreece and Russia and other
(27:28):
countries are watching TikTok ofAmerican kids.
Dr. Leonard Sax (27:32):
They're not, but I also, I don't want to be
misunderstood.
I'm not holding up Russia as arole model.
I have great concerns aboutRussian culture, but I'm merely
using it as a reference point.
Russian kids are not Russian,are not in a hurry to be
transgender.
That's the only point I'mmaking here.
American kids, american girls,are in a hurry to be transgender
(27:53):
.
That's the only point I'mmaking here.
American girls are in a hurryto be transgender.
We're seeing an explosion ofAmerican teenage girls.
Again, this is not a guess.
More than 3% of American highschool kids now identify as
transgender.
20 years ago it wasundetectable.
Now it's more than 3%.
That's a huge change in 20years.
And that's not happening inRussia.
It's not happening in Greece.
Even though Russian kids andGreek kids have phones, they
(28:16):
don't have American culture.
It's American culture that'sdriving this.
It's American confusion aboutgender that is driving this.
Greek culture and Russianculture is not confused about
gender, but American culture is.
If we don't teach girls to bewomen and boys to be men, then
they're confused and bad thingshappen.
And again, that's the focus ofmy book why Gender Matters?
(28:38):
We do need to teach boys to bemen.
We need to teach girls to bewomen.
What does that mean?
That's a different topic.
But you can't just cut kidsloose and set them adrift in
American culture when thatculture is a toxic culture.
Jordan Langdon (28:53):
Yes, that reminds me of a bit of an
interview.
I remember hearing that you didor maybe it was an article you
wrote about your own childhoodand your preferences as a young
boy, and how would that beinterpreted today?
Dr. Leonard Sax (29:06):
Tell us a little bit about yourself
growing up and so in why GenderMatters, chapter nine is on
gender nonconforming.
So I was and am a gendernonconforming boy.
I like ballet.
I did macrame as a boy andthat's fine.
(29:28):
I turned out to be a straightman.
But today, a boy who likedballet and macrame might very
well be asked what are yourpreferred pronouns?
Do you want to transition to thefemale role, which is really
harmful and really toxic andreally scary if you think about
it?
And I recall asking my mom whenI was seven or eight years old
(29:54):
if I marry a woman, will I haveto take my clothes off in bed
with her?
And she said yes, you will, butyou will want to.
And I said no, I won't.
Girls have cooties.
You can't ask a prepubescentchild about their sexual
orientation because prepubescentchildren don't have a sexual
orientation.
It's not developmentallyappropriate.
So there's so much confusionright now in the guidelines of
(30:18):
the American Academy ofPediatrics, which literally are
incoherent because they arewritten based in the assumption
that a six-year-old child knowstheir sexual orientation.
The American Academy ofPediatrics says that a
six-year-old boy says he's agirl.
You should transition him tothe female role.
You should change his name toEmily.
Those are the guidelines and Ihave debated this point actually
(30:38):
with pediatricians who don'tknow the guidelines.
They assume that that can't betrue.
They haven't read theguidelines and they said no, no,
no, no, no.
The guidelines say you wait.
I said no, they don't.
They don't say that theycondemn watchful waiting as
transphobic.
You need to go back and readthe guidelines, and I was doing
this at a Grand Rounds at aresidency program, and they
actually had to pull up theguidelines and read them aloud
(31:00):
to this pediatrician, who hadnot read the guidelines, assumed
that they couldn't say such aridiculous thing and and this
this board certifiedpediatrician had no idea what
the guidelines actually said andjust had to sit in stunned
silence, not aware that theAmerican Academy of Pediatrics
was commanding him to go againsthis own experience of training
(31:22):
and instead listen to asix-year-old.
If a six-year-old boy says he'sa girl, you, the pediatrician,
are supposed to facilitate thattransition and change his name
to Emily.
Change the birth certificate toEmily.
Justin never existed.
Those are the officialguidelines of the American
Academy of Pediatrics, publishedin 2018 and reaffirmed by the
Academy in 2023.
Jordan Langdon (31:42):
And is it true that the American Academy of
Pediatrics also indicates thatyou should change the gender on
the birth certificate, as ifthat boy never even existed?
Dr. Leonard Sax (31:51):
Yes, as I just said, you're supposed to change
the birth certificate to thesix-year-old's preference.
If Justin says he's a girl,you're supposed to change the
birth certificate to female andstart that boy on the road.
That will lead to castrationand cross-sex hormones and again
, this is not based in evidence.
It is contrary to evidence.
We have a great deal ofresearch which I cite in the
(32:11):
second edition of my book whyGender Matters.
We know a lot about these boys.
University of Toronto,especially the team there has
Ken Zucker and his people, havefollowed these boys.
We know that you followed thisboy 15 years down the road, at
20 years of age.
The great majority of these boysdo not say that they're female.
(32:32):
They don't want to be women.
Some of them are gay men.
They're very happy as gay men.
They don't want to have theirtesticles cut off.
They're perfectly fine withoutmedication and, as Dr Zucker has
said, you need to just wait.
You don't know what's going tohappen down the road, but the
great majority of these boyswill not persist in saying that
(32:54):
they're female.
They won't.
So to change his name to Emilyand put him in a dress is not in
his best interest.
That's what the evidence showsthe American Academy of
Pediatrics guidelines are notbased in evidence.
They and in support of theirguidelines, they cited one study
, a 1994 study, showing thatefforts to convert adult male
(33:22):
homosexuals to straight men wereunsuccessful.
That's utterly irrelevant.
So here are pediatriciansconfusing adult male sexual
orientation with the sexualidentity of children.
So they're confusing sexualidentity with sexual orientation
and they're confusing adultswith children.
That's a pretty major error forpediatricians to make, which I
(33:45):
pointed out in my letter to theeditor, which they published
alongside the guidelines, whichis just weird.
You know, I've been reading theAmerican Academy of Pediatrics
guidelines literally for 40years, since I was a medical
student at the University ofPennsylvania 40 years ago.
Usually, when they publish ahostile letter alongside the
guidelines a few you know whenthey publish their official
(34:05):
guidelines and then they publisha hostile letter saying these
guidelines are totallyridiculous.
Look, the evidence doesn'tsupport the guidelines.
A few weeks later, the authorswill publish a rebuttal saying
well, dr So-and-so is mistakenbecause they never published a
rebuttal and my letter is stillthere.
You can go to the originalguidelines Rafferty et al 2018,
and scroll down to the bottomand see my letter.
(34:25):
They never published a rebuttal.
It's just weird.
Jordan Langdon (34:30):
But also they've never changed the guidelines.
Dr. Leonard Sax (34:32):
And they have never changed the guidelines.
On the contrary, they havereaffirmed the guidelines,
because the guidelines are notbased in evidence.
The guidelines of the AmericanAcademy are based in politics,
and the politics have notchanged are based in very
leftist center politics, whichis that gender is a social
construct, that the notions ofmale and female are merely
(35:04):
inventions of theheteronormative patriarchy,
According to Judith Butler,professor of comparative
literature at University ofCalifornia, Berkeley.
And anyone who says otherwiseis a Republican or a Christian
or some other patriarch and wedon't need to pay any attention
to them.
That's the politics thatsupports these guidelines which,
as I said, contradict theevidence.
Jordan Langdon (35:25):
So if you're a parent listening, this is Dr
Leonard Sax talking about whygender matters and just the
confusion around gender identityamong some kids and
specifically in public schools.
So, Dr Sax, as a parent ofyoung elementary aged kids, what
would you recommend?
How do you recommend parentsspeak to their children when
(35:49):
their children bring home issueslike Johnny is now wearing a
skirt to school and asking us tocall him Sally.
How would you handle that as aparent these days?
Dr. Leonard Sax (35:59):
You know, I had the privilege a few weeks ago,
speaking at Mount CalvaryLutheran Church in Acton,
massachusetts, did sixpresentations over two days, and
parents there told me that atthe local elementary school, in
second grade, there are a cohortof girls who, with the
encouragement of the teacher,have been deconstructing gender,
(36:22):
and for a while these girlswere going by he.
But more recently these girlshave insisted on being referred
to as it it, and so you're nowsupposed to say what do you
think of what it just said?
And a mom told me how herdaughter has been coming home
very confused.
And mom asked me what should Isay to the teacher?
(36:45):
And my advice is blunt you needto leave the school.
You're not going to change thatschool.
This is Massachusetts, it's ablue state.
The odds that you are going topersuade that school that they
are wrong, that Judith Butler iswrong, is very small, because
what they are teaching isperfectly in line with the
Harvard Graduate School ofEducation, with University of
Wisconsin-Madison, withUniversity of Texas, austin.
(37:07):
This is absolutely in line withwhat most of the quote-unquote
leading schools of education inthe United States now teach,
which is that gender is a socialconstruct, which is that male
and female are inventions of theheteronormative patriarchy,
which is that we shouldencourage kids to deconstruct
their gender beginning at fiveyears of age.
You're not going to change that.
You need to leave the school.
Unfortunately, you need toleave the school, and if you
(37:30):
can't find a local school thatyou can afford, then you may
need to move.
And I'm not telling you to doanything that we didn't do.
My wife and I thought we wereinfertile.
We were not able to have kids.
We got evaluated, we were toldwe were infertile and then,
after 15 years of marriage, weconceived a child the
old-fashioned way, and we werenot happy with the local schools
and so we moved to ChesterCounty, pennsylvania.
(37:50):
So I'm not asking you to doanything we didn't do.
If you're not happy with yourlocal schools, you have to move.
And incidentally, I'd like toput in a plug for Utah If you're
going to move, utah is the mostfamily-friendly of all the
states and I have visited almostall of them.
You don't have to be Mormon Iam not but I have been very
(38:11):
impressed on my visits to Utah,in Salt Lake and Sandy and Provo
.
It is a very family-friendlyplace.
I'm sure maybe you can tell megood things about other
communities, but I have beenreally impressed with how the
public schools in Utah reallymake an effort to be
family-friendly and endorsetraditional families.
(38:33):
Utah is a reallyfamily-friendly and endorse
traditional families.
Utah is a reallyfamily-friendly place and I've I
actually have spoken to there'sa governor's council in Utah
that has that I've worked withrecently and and they're they're
they're taking this seriously.
So so I just want to say ashout out for Utah.
Jordan Langdon (38:50):
Yes, Awesome.
Well, and I know there's somegreat schools in Colorado that
you have visited and spoken atas well that have very Christian
values and are.
But you got to have money Ifyou cannot afford a private
school.
Dr. Leonard Sax (39:03):
I also want to make a shout out for the
Hillsdale Public Charter Schools, which are wonderful, and I've
spoken at more than half of themnationwide Now.
The problem with the publiccharter school, though, is that
(39:25):
it's a lottery and there's noguarantee that you're going to
get in.
But that's a great network ofpublic charter schools, but it's
a real problem.
If you're talking about aregular public school in the
United States, you need to besure that that school is going
to be teaching things that arein line with your values.
So you may have to move.
Your kid has to be your firstpriority.
Jordan Langdon (39:47):
Yes, I think that brings us back to the point
that we, the parents, are theauthority of our children and we
know their best interests.
And we do have to rise abovethe status quo of this culture,
this crazy American culture, andhave the courage to make
decisions about what's best forour kids that go against
mainstream culture right now andthat's what we're about here at
(40:09):
Families of Character is givingparents the courage and
confidence they need to say nowhen the rest of culture is
giving parents the courage andconfidence they need to say no
when the rest of culture issaying yes to things that really
go against our morals andvalues.
And I remember being told whenI was a young parent Jordan, as
a young mother, you know you areresponsible to be the primary
educator of your kids in faithand morals.
(40:30):
And I thought, yeah, I knewthat I really didn't.
I said what does that actuallymean?
And one of the things myhusband and I found that we were
doing, totally withoutrealizing it, was outsourcing
the development of our kids'morals and faith to these great
Christian schools they weregoing to.
We thought that they weregetting everything they needed
there and then, when they werehome with us after a long day at
(40:51):
work we would feed them andbathe them and get them ready
for school the next day and kindof rinse and repeat.
And it wasn't really until weleft the school system during
COVID and started homeschoolingthat it made sense for us.
Oh, it's not just teaching yourkids math that's not what it
means to be the primary educatorof your kid and faith and
morals, but it means bringingyour faith into the home, living
(41:14):
out your value you know, withyour, your children, so that
they recognize the good and thetrue and the beautiful right in
their own home.
That way, when they're out inthe crazy culture because they
will be.
We've traveled to 49 out of the50 States and every state we've
been to has a very confusedculture of young kids.
They witness this.
(41:35):
They come back home and they'regoing like those people are
confused.
That was kind of strange, butthey don't feel like they need
to join the crowd, right.
So I think you know making surethat at home we are providing
just a great role model for themto to see the different, true
differences between men andwomen and the goodness that
(41:55):
comes from these beautifulmarriages and families that
helps to kind of ward off thisconfusion with your own children
.
So one of the things I kind ofwas thinking about was also,
just when you were talking aboutchanging schools like you might
have to do something drasticand get your kid out of the
school.
Um, do you have a list on yourwebsite of all the schools that
(42:19):
you have spoken at, or theschools that you are speaking to
?
Dr. Leonard Sax (42:21):
Sure.
So if you go to my website,leonardsaxcom,
l-e-o-n-a-r-d-s-a-xcom, uh,click on workshops, then click
on schedule and you can see allof my upcoming visits although I
need to update that and put insome of the upcoming visits and
then you can also look back andsee all the visits I've done all
the way back to 2005.
And again, if you go back to2005, you'll see it was all
(42:41):
public schools back then and inthe last few years it's all
private schools, catholicschools and Protestant schools.
So you can get a sense of thevariety of schools I visited at
and how it's changed over timefor sure.
Jordan Langdon (42:55):
That's wonderful .
I've had many of parents reachout to me since we had you on
other episodes of our show andsay, like how do we get Dr Sax
to speak at our kids' school?
So I always direct them back toyour website and to contact you
directly through there, send anemail to request that you come
speak.
But I think a couple of us arejust going to get together and
find like a particular I don'tknow weekend and say we got four
(43:18):
schools for you right in thesame neighborhood.
Will you come, Dr Sax, becausethis is just so helpful?
This is what we want to hear isthe research and the evidence
behind why gender matters andwhat's truly good for our kids
and how to make decisions, eventhough they may be contrary to
what everyone else is doing, toreally protect the souls of our
(43:38):
young, young children.
So, Dr Sax, can you mention thefour books that you have out
there right now and I believeyou're working on another one.
Maybe you wrapped it up already, but.
Dr. Leonard Sax (43:47):
So why Gender Matters?
Again, you want to be sure toget the updated second edition.
Boys Adrift also be sure to getthe updated second edition.
Girls on the Edge get theupdated second edition.
And the Collapse of Parentingyou want to get the updated
second edition, which just cameout October 1, which is hard to
find on Amazon.
(44:08):
When you go to Amazoncom andyou type in thank you, the
Collapse of Parenting, you'vegot the right one.
Amazon wants to sell you theold edition.
If you have any trouble findingit, go to my website,
leonardsasscom.
Click on books, click on theCollapse of Parenting and then
you'll get the link to get thenew edition.
And I also want to make a plugfor the audio book.
For the first time ever, thepublisher allowed me to read the
(44:30):
audio book.
Awesome, and you can.
Wherever you get your audiobooks, you can click on the free
excerpt, which begins with astory from the office where mom
brought in her daughter,six-year-old daughter, who was
sick with a fever and sorethroat, and I asked the daughter
to open her mouth and say ah.
(44:51):
And the daughter said no.
And I said mom, looks like I'mgoing to need your help here.
Would you please ask yourdaughter to open her mouth and
say ah.
And mom said her body, herchoice.
So you can listen to me readthat book, um, uh, wherever you
get your audio books.
Um, so that was great fun 10hours of audio book.
(45:12):
And the producer was.
It was 20, 20 hours ofrecording it was.
It was.
It was grueling over many, many, many sessions, but but it's
done.
Jordan Langdon (45:23):
Well, we love your voice and the face-to-face
is always preferred, but if wecould get you in our ear for a
long road trip across the UnitedStates or a good flight to
Europe or something, and andbinge the book on audio, we will
do it.
So, Dr Sax, thank you for beingwith us.
Thank you for being courageousand willing to go up against
your colleagues and authors thatare getting a lot of publicity,
(45:44):
to share the truth and to godeeper than just what the eye
can see.
That's what I appreciate aboutyou is that you're willing to
dig down and get at it at theroot level, versus just kind of
plucking the head off thedandelion to make things look
good or be acceptable to society.
So if you'll come and join usagain, we'll have you back.
(46:05):
There's all kinds of things wecan talk about with you, but
appreciate you coming back onthe Families of Character show
and guys.
If you want anything of DrSax's books link to the research
article, you can find that inour show notes.
So just scroll down here inthis episode and you will find
links to purchase his books andto read his research articles.
Dr. Leonard Sax (46:26):
Thanks again for inviting me.
Jordan Langdon (46:27):
Thank you, yes, thank you so much and, guys,
we'll catch you on anotherepisode of our show real soon.
Please be sure to share thisepisode.
No-transcript.
Welcome back, parents.
Today we're tackling the issueof why gender matters and the
confusion our kids areexperiencing when they witness
their neighbor, friends or theirpeers identifying as the
opposite sex.
And you know, in my opinionthere's no one more qualified to
talk about this than our numberone fan favorite and expert, dr
(00:23):
Leonard Sax.
So welcome back to the show, DrSax.
Dr. Leonard Sax (00:26):
Thanks for inviting me.
Jordan Langdon (00:27):
Dr Sax, I've been a fan of yours for years
and I personally understand youreducation and experience in
this space, but can you justshare with our audience a little
bit about your education andprofessional experience that
truly makes you an expert inthis field?
Dr. Leonard Sax (00:42):
Well, sure?
So I attended public schools inOhio K-12.
I earned my undergraduatedegree in biology at MIT in
Cambridge Massachusetts.
I earned my doctorate inpsychology as my PhD in
psychology, as well as my MD mymedical degree at the University
of Pennsylvania.
I did a three-year residency infamily medicine at Lancaster
General Hospital in Lancaster,pennsylvania, and I have been a
(01:04):
medical doctor now for 38 yearsin the United States.
I have been board certified infamily medicine for 35 years, so
I am a family doctor.
But I started visiting schoolsin the United States in 2001.
I have now visited more than500 schools over the last 23
years.
I posted a link you can look atall my school visits from 2005
(01:25):
to the present.
When I started visiting schools,I really had a passion for
public schools because, as youknow, I'm a graduate of public
schools K-12, and I startedleading workshops for public
schools.
If you look at the early years2005 and 2006 and 2007 and 2008,
it was almost all publicschools, but I'm no longer
welcome at public schools.
If you look at recent years,it's all Catholic schools and
(01:46):
private schools and Protestantschools.
I can tell you some storiesabout that, about how I've
recently been canceled to publicschools if that interests you.
But yeah, I'm no longer welcome.
A few public charter schoolslike the Hillsdale schools will
still have me, but I haven'tspoken at a regular public
school in years like theHillsdale schools will still
have me, but I haven't spoken ata regular public school in
(02:07):
years.
Jordan Langdon (02:07):
Well, you have certainly been all over the
globe speaking, but lots ofschools in the United States as
well, and I do want to know alittle bit about why public
schools canceled you, becauseyour new book that just came out
this month, the Collapse ofParenting, the fully revised and
updated version, has thischapter and it just, oh my
goodness, it's titled Babies.
Dr. Leonard Sax (02:25):
So tell us about it that actually ties into
our topic today the transgenderissue.
So back in 2019, I had theprivilege of speaking at Helen
Keller Middle School in EasternConnecticut and early last year
2023, the superintendent reachedout and said you know, Dr.
Sax, we've been keeping recordson our professional development
for many years and when youspoke here in 2019, we got great
(02:48):
reviews from our teachers.
You got some of the highestmarks from our teachers for your
professional development.
We'd like to bring you back todo another workshop with our
teachers and to lead a sessionfor our parents and we'd like
you to do your talk for parentstitled TikTok Ate, my Daughter
and my Son Won't Stop PlayingVideo Games what Parents Need to
Know About Social Media andVideo Games.
And I said great.
So we wrote a contract and itwas all set up for me to speak
(03:10):
at Helen Keller Middle School inEastern Connecticut and they
prepared a flyer and sent out anemail to start promoting the
presentation for parents and aparent who had a and a parent
who had a transgender child, achild born a daughter, but who
had announced that this childwas now a boy, a trans boy.
(03:33):
The parent reached out to thesuperintendent and said well, I
googled this Leonard Sax and Isaw an interview he did on Megyn
Kelly where he said that thesegirls who say they're boys are
in most cases confused andmistaken and should not
transition to the male role.
And I don't want him to speak.
And the superintendent said allright, you're welcome to come
(03:54):
to the board meeting and presentyour petition.
So she came to the meeting ofthe school board and presented
her position and the board votedand, by a vote of nine to zero,
rejected her position and theboard voted, and by a vote of
nine to zero.
Jordan Langdon (04:05):
rejected her position Okay.
Dr. Leonard Sax (04:07):
Whereupon she reached out to the national
organization and an activist forthe national transgender
reached out to contacted thesuperintendent and said if you
bring Dr Sax to EasternConnecticut, you better hire a
lot of security, because we willbe there in force, we will have
(04:27):
bullhorns, we will have smokebombs, we will have stink bombs,
we regard Dr Sax as atransphobe and a bigot and we
will not allow him to speak inEastern Connecticut.
And the superintendent saidhe's not talking about gender,
he's talking about TikTok.
He's not even going to mentiontransgender.
And they said we don't care,he's a bigot and we will not
(04:48):
allow him to set foot in easternConnecticut.
And so I was canceled.
Jordan Langdon (04:54):
Wow, Dr Satt.
The threats and the fear of thetruth, I guess, really lights
people up.
And so you continue to speak atprivate schools and you're very
welcome at Christian schoolsand Catholic schools and Jewish
schools across the nation, andwe're so glad because one of the
things that we value about youand your speaking is all the
years of research that you havedone and the studying you've
(05:17):
done to support the facts here.
So let's dive into this chapterthat you added and included in
your book, the Collapse ofParenting, that is titled Babies
.
Dr. Leonard Sax (05:26):
So when the first edition of the Collapse of
Parenting came out gosh, it'snow more than eight years ago,
I'm glad to say it was a NewYork Times bestseller and the
publisher reached out and saidit's time for a new edition,
which I agree, because a lot ofthings have changed.
The first edition made nomention of transgender because
it really wasn't a thing when Iwas writing the previous edition
(05:49):
.
I mean, that was just in 2015.
It's not that long ago, butthis is really new.
It's all happened in a veryshort period of time.
No mention of transgender inthe first edition, but I felt we
need to discuss this in thesecond edition, even though I
wrote a whole other book calledwhy Gender Matters, which has a
whole lot.
Well, actually, the firstedition of why Gender Matters
doesn't have anything ontransgender because when I wrote
(06:10):
the first edition 20 years ago,that wasn't a thing.
You know, 30 years ago, exactly30 years ago, in 1994, the
American Psychiatric Associationraised the question how common
is transgender?
And they said it's so rare thatwe cannot estimate with any
accuracy, but we estimate it isroughly one in 30,000 men and
(06:33):
perhaps one in 100,000 women.
So we just this month got thelatest numbers the Youth Risk
Behavior Survey, a nationalsurvey, a very carefully
executed survey conducted by theCenters for Disease Control of
high school students in theUnited States, showing that just
over 3% of high school studentsnow say they are transgender
(06:55):
and an additional 2% say thatthey are non-binary, neither
male nor female.
So we've gone from fewer thanone in 10,000 adults saying
they're transgender to more thanthree in 100 high school
students saying they aretransgender in less than 30
years.
So in my book why GenderMatters?
Second edition, second edition Igo into a deep dive into why
(07:20):
that is so.
This first edition, as I said,doesn't address this, because 20
years ago it wasn't a thing.
But the second edition has 12chapters, the last four of which
are gender non-conforming,lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender and intersex, with apretty deep dive into what
happened in a short period oftime that so many kids are now
confused and drifting.
And the short answer, the shortsummary, is that kids are not
(07:42):
born knowing what it means tobeing a man or woman.
They have to be taught and ifwe don't teach them and we set
them adrift in a confusedculture, they will be confused.
That's the short version.
So the Collapse of Parenting isnot a book about gender.
I wrote a book about gender.
The Collapse of Parenting isnot that book but I felt I
(08:03):
needed to include a chapterabout this because the Collapse
of Parenting is not that book.
But I felt I needed to includea chapter about this because the
Collapse of Parenting is a bookabout parental authority and
what has happened that I thoughtis relevant is that in blue
states and in purple states likeColorado, there has been a
concerted effort to undermineparental authority and I share a
(08:23):
number of stories in that newchapter in the Collapse of
Parents where confused kids havetransitioned or have actively
been.
Teachers at their schools havetried to persuade children as
young as six, according to courtdocuments.
I describe how a teacher inPennsylvania tried to persuade a
(08:47):
six-year-old boy to transitionto being a girl without the
parents' knowledge or consent,and the parents, when they
learned of this, sued thedistrict and this case is in
court right now and the schooldistrict's response was that the
parents had no right to contestwhat the teacher was doing in
the school and that's why Ithought it was relevant to
include in a book about parentalauthority that there are now
(09:08):
school districts in Pennsylvania, which is not a blue state,
it's a purple state and it's myhome state.
You know and this district isnot far from my home where a
school district will in courtsay that a parent has no right
to any knowledge of what ateacher is doing in the first
grade classroom, that a teacherhas full right to tell the
(09:31):
six-year-old that you know whatyour parents think you're a boy,
but I think you're a girl and Ithink you should transition to
being a girl, and that there'snothing wrong with a teacher
doing that, and that the schooldistrict has the nerve to say
that in a court of law againstthe parents' will.
I think parents need to be ontheir guard.
I think parents need to beaware that public school
districts now are willing to saysuch a thing, that you need to
(09:52):
be on your guard, that schooldistricts are willing to do this
.
Your kid is perfectly fine,perfectly normal, goes into
school and this teacher, whohappens to have a transgender
kid, now has their own agendaand is setting out now to try to
persuade your kid that your sonshould be a girl.
That's really harmful and youneed to be on your guard.
You need to be aware, becauseyour kid has no problems.
(10:15):
But going to a school with ateacher with an agenda could
create problems for your kid.
Jordan Langdon (10:22):
Wow, I know, when I was reading that chapter
and I saw the blurb about.
You know the flyer that theparent put up inside the school.
Dr. Leonard Sax (10:30):
That the teacher put up inside the school
.
Jordan Langdon (10:32):
Oh, yes, you're right.
Dr. Leonard Sax (10:33):
Yes, the teacher put up a flyer in the
school said that if your parentdoesn't approve of your
transitioning, then I'm your momnow and this was a different
lawsuit, a different case.
But again, parents across theUnited States are waking up to
this concern that many of theseteachers who have this agenda
encouraging their kids inelementary school and middle
(10:53):
school to transition to theother sex without the parents
themselves, are left of center.
In California, in Massachusetts, in New Jersey, and they said I
feel stabbed in the back here.
My daughter has ADHD, she's onthe spectrum and she's
transitioning to the male roleand the school didn't even
notify me.
(11:14):
She's been identifying as a boyat school for six months and
the school didn't tell me I'mleft of center.
I'm a card carrying Democrat andthe school regards me as the
enemy.
Why?
I don't get this.
I'm a member of the ACLU.
Why am I regarded as the enemy?
And I thought these wereplaintive voices.
These are leftist center, aclumember, democratic parents who
(11:37):
are like why is this schoolregarding me as the enemy?
Because I'm the parent.
So I think it's important forparents to understand that,
unfortunately, many publicschools now have a default of
regarding parents as the enemy.
That's a problem and I thoughtthat's why, even though the
Collapse of Parenting is not abook about gender, I think we
(11:58):
needed a chapter about thistransgender issue in this book,
that parents need to be on theirguard, need to be aware.
Jordan Langdon (12:04):
Well, and that gives me hope and motivates me
as a parent of young children.
I have an 18-year-old, a12-year-old and a 10-year-old
and we are the authority of ourchildren and I think so many
times the culture can give usthis message that you know you
should just let your childchoose and you know they know
what's best for them.
They've been living in thisbody forever and you even say in
(12:24):
your book the idea that kidsare brought up to, you know,
just kind of question theiridentity and wait until they're
five, six or seven to determinethemselves whether they're male
or female or non-binary, likeyou said.
Dr. Leonard Sax (12:37):
So I just had the privilege this past Sunday
of preaching a sermon.
This was a first for me.
I have never before in my lifestood in the pulpit to preach a
Sunday morning sermon.
I'm not ordained, I've neverbeen to seminary, but Pastor
Kevin at Church of the Savior inWayne, pennsylvania, happens to
be a fan, has read all four ofmy books and invited me to
(12:58):
preach the sermon.
And of course he and I met andhe said if you preach the sermon
, what would you preach?
And I said I would preach onbiblical parenting and it would
be based on Deuteronomy, chaptersix, verse seven, which is
usually translated teach themdiligently to your children.
But I am a student of biblicalHebrew and I can tell you that's
not what the Hebrew says.
The Hebrew is v'shinantamlevanecha and I have an exegesis
(13:21):
of this passage.
In the collapse of parenting itwould be easy to say that in
biblical Hebrew the verb therewould be lamed, to teach.
But the verb is not lamed, theverb is shanein.
Shanein doesn't mean to teach,it means to chisel in stone.
It comes from the Hebrew rootshein, meaning tooth.
So a better translation ofv'shinantam levanecha,
(13:42):
deuteronomy, chapter 6, verse 7,would be something like incise
these laws in the hearts of yourchildren.
Inscribe or chisel these lawsin the hearts of your children.
And right alongside that I citea column from the New York
Times.
A longtime columnist for theNew York Times, jennifer Finney
Boylan, wrote a column onenlightened parenting in which
she asserts that enlightenedparenting means setting your
(14:04):
child free to discover forthemselves their own right and
wrong.
And if, in so doing, your childbecomes a stranger to you, then
so be it.
So that was my sermon this pastSunday, putting those two side
by side.
Biblical parenting isv'shinantam levetecha.
Incise these laws in the heartsof your children.
(14:25):
Biblical parenting is bothstrict and loving.
You set that alongsidecontemporary parenting that you
get from the New York Times andNational Public Radio.
Good parenting means lettingyour kids decide.
Let your kid discover forthemselves their own right and
wrong.
Well, it turns out that we havegood evidence.
We have the work of DanaBaumrand and other leading
(14:46):
parenting researchers that showus that the best parenting is
authoritative parenting.
It's strict and loving, inc.
National Public Radio.
Set your kid loose to discoverfor themselves their own right
(15:07):
and wrong is permissiveparenting, and the result is
kids who are anxious anddepressed and addicted to drugs
and alcohol.
We know this and again a greatdeal of my book, the Collapse of
Parenting.
Well, two chapters to beprecise is devoted to the
longitudinal cohort studiesshowing that parenting that is
strict and loving results inkids who are happy and healthy
(15:27):
and doing well.
Whereas the New York TimesNational Public Radio parenting
permissive parenting results inkids who are anxious and
depressed and much more likelyto be addicted to drugs and
alcohol, turns out that biblicalparenting is evidence-based
parenting and results in kidswho are happy and healthy and
doing well.
That was my sermon and Dr Kevinwas pleased and we had a good
(15:49):
result from the congregation.
Jordan Langdon (15:51):
Wonderful.
I love your references back tothe Bible.
I remember early on when Iinterviewed you and we were
talking about social media andphones and you referenced the,
our Father, and you said Jordan.
It says right there lead us notinto temptation.
As parents, we cannot tempt ourchildren into things that are
going to be terrible for them.
We have to be the yes, we haveto be the one that takes the
(16:13):
brunt of it for the child.
Where we give our kidspermission to say my parents are
rotten, they don't let me be onmy phone after eight o'clock,
right, it makes sense to me whyyou had be asked to give a
sermon.
So what else do we need to knowthat's going on out in our
culture regarding, you know,this gender confusion with kids
and kind of what we can do asparents to help our kids
(16:35):
understand the truth about theirgender.
Dr. Leonard Sax (16:37):
Well, I think the most important new finding
in the research has to do withsocial media.
You know my brand, if you like,is evidence-based,
evidence-based parenting, andall throughout my four books,
I'm always telling parents anyrecommendation I'm going to make
to you is based in evidence.
When I make a recommendation,I'm always going to show you the
scholarly research as well asmy clinical experience as a
(16:59):
family physician with threedecades of experience.
Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
So what do we know about socialmedia?
Well, certainly, the leadingresearcher there, Jean Twenge,
did this huge study back in 2019with her colleague, keith
Campbell, following over 200,000adolescents over time.
And on the X axis is time spenton social media, and on the Y
(17:21):
axis is the likelihood ofbecoming anxious or depressed,
and there's no rise in thattrend line until 30 minutes a
day.
And once you get beyond 30minutes a day, you see a pretty
linear rise going up and up and,up and up and up.
So how much time on socialmedia is too much time?
Based on that study, I wouldsay less than 30 minutes a day
is fine.
But that study was published in2019 based on data gathered in
(17:43):
2018, which means it's beforeTikTok.
So TikTok changed everythingand studies published since then
.
Now, in the TikTok era, there'sno safe amount of time.
The risk begins at time zero.
And I reached out to JeanTwenge last year and I said
you've seen all these newerstudies, there's no safe amount
(18:03):
of time.
And she responded to my emailand she said the evidence now
supports a total ban on socialmedia for all kids under 18
years of age.
And I said can I quote you?
And she said, yes, you mayquote me.
And so that's what I've beensharing with parents now a total
ban on social media for allkids under 18 years of age, with
(18:26):
parents now a total ban onsocial media for all kids under
18 years of age.
And I think I really, reallypush that for parents.
And so you know, a lot ofpeople have been buzzing about
John Haidt's big book, theAnxious Generation, which is
indeed a publishing phenomenon,you know, number one New York
Times bestseller top, on theAmazon bestseller list, top 10
every week since it waspublished back in March.
But there's one big thing thatJohn Haidt has overlooked.
(18:48):
So he's really big on pointingout that this rise in anxiety
and depression began withInstagram, began around 2010, 11
, 12.
And it's gotten worse sinceTikTok, and that's true.
But one thing that he overlooksis that it's only in the
English speaking world.
It's not true in Greece.
(19:08):
It's not true in Russia.
Kids in Greece and Russia arejust as likely to have
smartphones.
They're just as likely to be onsmartphones as kids in the
United States at 10, at 12, at14 years of age, but they're not
any more likely.
They're not.
The rise in anxiety anddepression has not been seen
outside the English-speakingworld, and I recently wrote an
article pointing this out.
(19:29):
And the new edition of theCollapse of Parenting because we
have the state and time for thenew edition.
It's a major focus of the newedition what's going on in the
English-speaking world.
So I think this is a majorproblem with John Hyde's book.
He believes that the bigproblem is in the device.
He thinks you need to take awaythe smartphone and I think he's
overlooking the culture.
(19:50):
John Haidt, with all duerespect, brilliant guy, great
book.
He's an atheist who lives inManhattan and he loves Manhattan
, and he's overlooking the toxicAmerican culture.
He loves American culture, heloves Manhattan and he's an
atheist.
He can't see it.
He doesn't regard it as aproblem, he lives in it, he
(20:12):
swims in it.
He doesn't see it as a problem.
I'm not an atheist and I don'tlive in Manhattan.
I see the atheist culture ofManhattan as a problem and he is
overlooking it.
And if you don't want to read mybook, the Class of Parenting,
that's fine.
Just Google my name andInstitute for Family Studies and
maybe maybe Jordan, you couldinclude a link to the article I
(20:32):
just wrote two weeks ago forInstitute for Family Studies
titled Toxic Culture or ToxicPhones.
Maybe it's Toxic Phones orToxic Culture.
The editor gave the title whereI begin by mentioning John
Hyde's book the AnxiousGeneration.
Then I link to the researchshowing that this rise in
anxiety and depression is notseen outside the
English-speaking world and Imake one of the central claims
(20:55):
in the new edition, which isthat the rise in anxiety and
depression and transgender,which have all occurred in the
last 15 years and are allconfined to the English-speaking
world, you don't see this risein transgender in Greece and
Russia.
Jordan Langdon (21:11):
You see it in the.
Dr. Leonard Sa (21:12):
English-speaking world.
It's due to this peculiarconfusion in the
English-speaking world.
What's going on in theEnglish-speaking world?
It's the culture of disrespect,it's the collapse of parenting.
And a third ingredient that wehaven't talked about yet and
it's very relevant to thistransgender issue normophobia,
(21:35):
normophobia, n-o-r-m-o-phobia,normophobia A term coined
earlier this year by MaryHarrington, just in time for me
to include it in the class ofparenting.
Before the book went to press,mary Harrington, writing in a
magazine called First Things,talked about how young people
(21:55):
today teens and young adultshave this new fear, and as soon
as I read her article I saidthat's the word I've been
looking for that describes whatI'm seeing in my interviews with
young people and in the officeas a family doctor.
So 15 years ago I wrote a bookcalled Girls on the Edge,
sharing what I was observing inthe office with the girls back
then talking about the late2000s.
(22:17):
Back then, girls in the late2000s wanted to be effortlessly
perfect.
That was the thing back thenand the book was well-received,
right.
The Atlantic magazine.
Caitlin Flanagan called it thebest book about girls and young
women in the United States today, very proud of that.
Then the publisher asked me towrite a new edition published
more recently and I found thatthings had really changed.
Girls today don't want to beeffortlessly perfect.
(22:40):
That's boring.
They don't want to be perfectat all.
You've got to be.
That's boring.
That's boring, boring, boring,boring.
Social media is teaching kids.
Are you neurotypical or are youneurodivergent?
Are you gender typical or areyou excuse me, are you gender
(23:00):
conforming or are you gendernon-conforming?
Who wants to be typical andconforming?
Typical and conforming areboring, lame, unimaginative.
You want to be non-conforming.
You want to be divergent.
The terms kids learn in thesocial media, the English
(23:25):
speaking world and MatthewCrawford had a great article on
this which I also cite.
On his sub-sack he says itincentivizes kids to be
pathological.
Social media in American popularculture now incentivizes kids
to think of themselves asnothing worse than being white
and straight.
That is like really bad.
White, straight and Christianis like the worst thing you can
(23:49):
be.
You've got to be something else.
Uh, so so being being queer isgood, being being bi is good,
being trans is excellent.
Um, so 50 years ago, cs Lewisno, it's not 50 years ago, it's
70 years ago CS Lewis wrote abook for children called the
Magician's Nephew, and in hisbook he said, the problem about
(24:13):
trying to make yourself stupiderthan you really are is that you
very often succeed.
You very often succeed and in myessay I say substitute more
anxious or more depressed forstupider and you begin to
understand what's happeningright now.
(24:34):
The problem with trying to makeyourself more anxious or more
depressed than you really are isthat you very often succeed.
Being normal is now lame andboring and unimaginative.
The collapse of parenting hasset kids adrift in a toxic a
newly toxic culture ofdisrespect and envy, in which
(24:56):
it's cool to be depressed andqueer and trans and anxious and
to present yourself as anxiousand depressed and trans.
But this is only true in theEnglish speaking world.
We don't find this outside theEnglish-speaking world.
So I also talked to parentsabout some medical terms,
(25:17):
vectors and causal agents.
So let's talk about malaria.
The Anopheles mosquito is thevector of malaria, but it's not
the causal agent of malaria.
The causal agent is amicroorganism called Plasmodium
falciparum.
You have to use a microscope tosee this little tiny
microorganism.
That's what actually causesmalaria.
(25:39):
The mosquito spreads Plasmodiumfalciparum, the microorganism
that causes malaria.
You won't get malaria unlessthe mosquito bites you.
So, yeah, you need to block themosquito, with mosquito netting
et cetera, but you don't needto worry about malaria if you
live in Colorado, because youdon't have the mosquitoes there.
You don't have the causal agentthere.
(26:01):
Without the causal agent, youwon't get the malaria.
They have phones in Greece andRussia, but those kids are not
transgender.
Those kids are not anxious anddepressed because they don't
have the causal agent.
The causal agent is the toxicAmerican culture.
We need to lock down the phonesand the social media in North
America, not because the phonesthemselves are evil, contrary to
(26:26):
John Haidt but because theculture has become evil.
And this is where John Haidt, Ithink, has missed something
really important the culture,this toxic culture of
transgender and normophobia, hasbecome really harmful.
And we do have to limit thephones and lock down the social
(26:46):
media because the phones aretransmitting this toxic culture.
The phones are like thatmosquito transmitting that toxic
culture, but the phonesthemselves are not the toxicity.
The toxicity is in the socialmedia and the toxic culture of
normophobia and transgenderism.
Jordan Langdon (27:04):
So that is so interesting to me and I would
agree with you.
I was just in Greece onvacation last year and I really
did not see the same types ofthings with children over there,
matter of fact at all.
I didn't see this confusion inthe way they dressed or
identified or anything.
I didn't see any evidence ofthat.
But I'm a little bit naiveabout social media.
I guess I figured people inGreece and Russia and other
(27:28):
countries are watching TikTok ofAmerican kids.
Dr. Leonard Sax (27:32):
They're not, but I also, I don't want to be
misunderstood.
I'm not holding up Russia as arole model.
I have great concerns aboutRussian culture, but I'm merely
using it as a reference point.
Russian kids are not Russian,are not in a hurry to be
transgender.
That's the only point I'mmaking here.
American kids, american girls,are in a hurry to be transgender
(27:53):
.
That's the only point I'mmaking here.
American girls are in a hurryto be transgender.
We're seeing an explosion ofAmerican teenage girls.
Again, this is not a guess.
More than 3% of American highschool kids now identify as
transgender.
20 years ago it wasundetectable.
Now it's more than 3%.
That's a huge change in 20years.
And that's not happening inRussia.
It's not happening in Greece.
Even though Russian kids andGreek kids have phones, they
(28:16):
don't have American culture.
It's American culture that'sdriving this.
It's American confusion aboutgender that is driving this.
Greek culture and Russianculture is not confused about
gender, but American culture is.
If we don't teach girls to bewomen and boys to be men, then
they're confused and bad thingshappen.
And again, that's the focus ofmy book why Gender Matters?
(28:38):
We do need to teach boys to bemen.
We need to teach girls to bewomen.
What does that mean?
That's a different topic.
But you can't just cut kidsloose and set them adrift in
American culture when thatculture is a toxic culture.
Jordan Langdon (28:53):
Yes, that reminds me of a bit of an
interview.
I remember hearing that you didor maybe it was an article you
wrote about your own childhoodand your preferences as a young
boy, and how would that beinterpreted today?
Dr. Leonard Sax (29:06):
Tell us a little bit about yourself
growing up and so in why GenderMatters, chapter nine is on
gender nonconforming.
So I was and am a gendernonconforming boy.
I like ballet.
I did macrame as a boy andthat's fine.
(29:28):
I turned out to be a straightman.
But today, a boy who likedballet and macrame might very
well be asked what are yourpreferred pronouns?
Do you want to transition to thefemale role, which is really
harmful and really toxic andreally scary if you think about
it?
And I recall asking my mom whenI was seven or eight years old
(29:54):
if I marry a woman, will I haveto take my clothes off in bed
with her?
And she said yes, you will, butyou will want to.
And I said no, I won't.
Girls have cooties.
You can't ask a prepubescentchild about their sexual
orientation because prepubescentchildren don't have a sexual
orientation.
It's not developmentallyappropriate.
So there's so much confusionright now in the guidelines of
(30:18):
the American Academy ofPediatrics, which literally are
incoherent because they arewritten based in the assumption
that a six-year-old child knowstheir sexual orientation.
The American Academy ofPediatrics says that a
six-year-old boy says he's agirl.
You should transition him tothe female role.
You should change his name toEmily.
Those are the guidelines and Ihave debated this point actually
(30:38):
with pediatricians who don'tknow the guidelines.
They assume that that can't betrue.
They haven't read theguidelines and they said no, no,
no, no, no.
The guidelines say you wait.
I said no, they don't.
They don't say that theycondemn watchful waiting as
transphobic.
You need to go back and readthe guidelines, and I was doing
this at a Grand Rounds at aresidency program, and they
actually had to pull up theguidelines and read them aloud
(31:00):
to this pediatrician, who hadnot read the guidelines, assumed
that they couldn't say such aridiculous thing and and this
this board certifiedpediatrician had no idea what
the guidelines actually said andjust had to sit in stunned
silence, not aware that theAmerican Academy of Pediatrics
was commanding him to go againsthis own experience of training
(31:22):
and instead listen to asix-year-old.
If a six-year-old boy says he'sa girl, you, the pediatrician,
are supposed to facilitate thattransition and change his name
to Emily.
Change the birth certificate toEmily.
Justin never existed.
Those are the officialguidelines of the American
Academy of Pediatrics, publishedin 2018 and reaffirmed by the
Academy in 2023.
Jordan Langdon (31:42):
And is it true that the American Academy of
Pediatrics also indicates thatyou should change the gender on
the birth certificate, as ifthat boy never even existed?
Dr. Leonard Sax (31:51):
Yes, as I just said, you're supposed to change
the birth certificate to thesix-year-old's preference.
If Justin says he's a girl,you're supposed to change the
birth certificate to female andstart that boy on the road.
That will lead to castrationand cross-sex hormones and again
, this is not based in evidence.
It is contrary to evidence.
We have a great deal ofresearch which I cite in the
(32:11):
second edition of my book whyGender Matters.
We know a lot about these boys.
University of Toronto,especially the team there has
Ken Zucker and his people, havefollowed these boys.
We know that you followed thisboy 15 years down the road, at
20 years of age.
The great majority of these boysdo not say that they're female.
(32:32):
They don't want to be women.
Some of them are gay men.
They're very happy as gay men.
They don't want to have theirtesticles cut off.
They're perfectly fine withoutmedication and, as Dr Zucker has
said, you need to just wait.
You don't know what's going tohappen down the road, but the
great majority of these boyswill not persist in saying that
(32:54):
they're female.
They won't.
So to change his name to Emilyand put him in a dress is not in
his best interest.
That's what the evidence showsthe American Academy of
Pediatrics guidelines are notbased in evidence.
They and in support of theirguidelines, they cited one study
, a 1994 study, showing thatefforts to convert adult male
(33:22):
homosexuals to straight men wereunsuccessful.
That's utterly irrelevant.
So here are pediatriciansconfusing adult male sexual
orientation with the sexualidentity of children.
So they're confusing sexualidentity with sexual orientation
and they're confusing adultswith children.
That's a pretty major error forpediatricians to make, which I
(33:45):
pointed out in my letter to theeditor, which they published
alongside the guidelines, whichis just weird.
You know, I've been reading theAmerican Academy of Pediatrics
guidelines literally for 40years, since I was a medical
student at the University ofPennsylvania 40 years ago.
Usually, when they publish ahostile letter alongside the
guidelines a few you know whenthey publish their official
(34:05):
guidelines and then they publisha hostile letter saying these
guidelines are totallyridiculous.
Look, the evidence doesn'tsupport the guidelines.
A few weeks later, the authorswill publish a rebuttal saying
well, dr So-and-so is mistakenbecause they never published a
rebuttal and my letter is stillthere.
You can go to the originalguidelines Rafferty et al 2018,
and scroll down to the bottomand see my letter.
(34:25):
They never published a rebuttal.
It's just weird.
Jordan Langdon (34:30):
But also they've never changed the guidelines.
Dr. Leonard Sax (34:32):
And they have never changed the guidelines.
On the contrary, they havereaffirmed the guidelines,
because the guidelines are notbased in evidence.
The guidelines of the AmericanAcademy are based in politics,
and the politics have notchanged are based in very
leftist center politics, whichis that gender is a social
construct, that the notions ofmale and female are merely
(35:04):
inventions of theheteronormative patriarchy,
According to Judith Butler,professor of comparative
literature at University ofCalifornia, Berkeley.
And anyone who says otherwiseis a Republican or a Christian
or some other patriarch and wedon't need to pay any attention
to them.
That's the politics thatsupports these guidelines which,
as I said, contradict theevidence.
Jordan Langdon (35:25):
So if you're a parent listening, this is Dr
Leonard Sax talking about whygender matters and just the
confusion around gender identityamong some kids and
specifically in public schools.
So, Dr Sax, as a parent ofyoung elementary aged kids, what
would you recommend?
How do you recommend parentsspeak to their children when
(35:49):
their children bring home issueslike Johnny is now wearing a
skirt to school and asking us tocall him Sally.
How would you handle that as aparent these days?
Dr. Leonard Sax (35:59):
You know, I had the privilege a few weeks ago,
speaking at Mount CalvaryLutheran Church in Acton,
massachusetts, did sixpresentations over two days, and
parents there told me that atthe local elementary school, in
second grade, there are a cohortof girls who, with the
encouragement of the teacher,have been deconstructing gender,
(36:22):
and for a while these girlswere going by he.
But more recently these girlshave insisted on being referred
to as it it, and so you're nowsupposed to say what do you
think of what it just said?
And a mom told me how herdaughter has been coming home
very confused.
And mom asked me what should Isay to the teacher?
(36:45):
And my advice is blunt you needto leave the school.
You're not going to change thatschool.
This is Massachusetts, it's ablue state.
The odds that you are going topersuade that school that they
are wrong, that Judith Butler iswrong, is very small, because
what they are teaching isperfectly in line with the
Harvard Graduate School ofEducation, with University of
Wisconsin-Madison, withUniversity of Texas, austin.
(37:07):
This is absolutely in line withwhat most of the quote-unquote
leading schools of education inthe United States now teach,
which is that gender is a socialconstruct, which is that male
and female are inventions of theheteronormative patriarchy,
which is that we shouldencourage kids to deconstruct
their gender beginning at fiveyears of age.
You're not going to change that.
You need to leave the school.
Unfortunately, you need toleave the school, and if you
(37:30):
can't find a local school thatyou can afford, then you may
need to move.
And I'm not telling you to doanything that we didn't do.
My wife and I thought we wereinfertile.
We were not able to have kids.
We got evaluated, we were toldwe were infertile and then,
after 15 years of marriage, weconceived a child the
old-fashioned way, and we werenot happy with the local schools
and so we moved to ChesterCounty, pennsylvania.
(37:50):
So I'm not asking you to doanything we didn't do.
If you're not happy with yourlocal schools, you have to move.
And incidentally, I'd like toput in a plug for Utah If you're
going to move, utah is the mostfamily-friendly of all the
states and I have visited almostall of them.
You don't have to be Mormon Iam not but I have been very
(38:11):
impressed on my visits to Utah,in Salt Lake and Sandy and Provo
.
It is a very family-friendlyplace.
I'm sure maybe you can tell megood things about other
communities, but I have beenreally impressed with how the
public schools in Utah reallymake an effort to be
family-friendly and endorsetraditional families.
(38:33):
Utah is a reallyfamily-friendly and endorse
traditional families.
Utah is a reallyfamily-friendly place and I've I
actually have spoken to there'sa governor's council in Utah
that has that I've worked withrecently and and they're they're
they're taking this seriously.
So so I just want to say ashout out for Utah.
Jordan Langdon (38:50):
Yes, Awesome.
Well, and I know there's somegreat schools in Colorado that
you have visited and spoken atas well that have very Christian
values and are.
But you got to have money Ifyou cannot afford a private
school.
Dr. Leonard Sax (39:03):
I also want to make a shout out for the
Hillsdale Public Charter Schools, which are wonderful, and I've
spoken at more than half of themnationwide Now.
The problem with the publiccharter school, though, is that
(39:25):
it's a lottery and there's noguarantee that you're going to
get in.
But that's a great network ofpublic charter schools, but it's
a real problem.
If you're talking about aregular public school in the
United States, you need to besure that that school is going
to be teaching things that arein line with your values.
So you may have to move.
Your kid has to be your firstpriority.
Jordan Langdon (39:47):
Yes, I think that brings us back to the point
that we, the parents, are theauthority of our children and we
know their best interests.
And we do have to rise abovethe status quo of this culture,
this crazy American culture, andhave the courage to make
decisions about what's best forour kids that go against
mainstream culture right now andthat's what we're about here at
(40:09):
Families of Character is givingparents the courage and
confidence they need to say nowhen the rest of culture is
giving parents the courage andconfidence they need to say no
when the rest of culture issaying yes to things that really
go against our morals andvalues.
And I remember being told whenI was a young parent Jordan, as
a young mother, you know you areresponsible to be the primary
educator of your kids in faithand morals.
(40:30):
And I thought, yeah, I knewthat I really didn't.
I said what does that actuallymean?
And one of the things myhusband and I found that we were
doing, totally withoutrealizing it, was outsourcing
the development of our kids'morals and faith to these great
Christian schools they weregoing to.
We thought that they weregetting everything they needed
there and then, when they werehome with us after a long day at
(40:51):
work we would feed them andbathe them and get them ready
for school the next day and kindof rinse and repeat.
And it wasn't really until weleft the school system during
COVID and started homeschoolingthat it made sense for us.
Oh, it's not just teaching yourkids math that's not what it
means to be the primary educatorof your kid and faith and
morals, but it means bringingyour faith into the home, living
(41:14):
out your value you know, withyour, your children, so that
they recognize the good and thetrue and the beautiful right in
their own home.
That way, when they're out inthe crazy culture because they
will be.
We've traveled to 49 out of the50 States and every state we've
been to has a very confusedculture of young kids.
They witness this.
(41:35):
They come back home and they'regoing like those people are
confused.
That was kind of strange, butthey don't feel like they need
to join the crowd, right.
So I think you know making surethat at home we are providing
just a great role model for themto to see the different, true
differences between men andwomen and the goodness that
(41:55):
comes from these beautifulmarriages and families that
helps to kind of ward off thisconfusion with your own children
.
So one of the things I kind ofwas thinking about was also,
just when you were talking aboutchanging schools like you might
have to do something drasticand get your kid out of the
school.
Um, do you have a list on yourwebsite of all the schools that
(42:19):
you have spoken at, or theschools that you are speaking to
?
Dr. Leonard Sax (42:21):
Sure.
So if you go to my website,leonardsaxcom,
l-e-o-n-a-r-d-s-a-xcom, uh,click on workshops, then click
on schedule and you can see allof my upcoming visits although I
need to update that and put insome of the upcoming visits and
then you can also look back andsee all the visits I've done all
the way back to 2005.
And again, if you go back to2005, you'll see it was all
(42:41):
public schools back then and inthe last few years it's all
private schools, catholicschools and Protestant schools.
So you can get a sense of thevariety of schools I visited at
and how it's changed over timefor sure.
Jordan Langdon (42:55):
That's wonderful .
I've had many of parents reachout to me since we had you on
other episodes of our show andsay, like how do we get Dr Sax
to speak at our kids' school?
So I always direct them back toyour website and to contact you
directly through there, send anemail to request that you come
speak.
But I think a couple of us arejust going to get together and
find like a particular I don'tknow weekend and say we got four
(43:18):
schools for you right in thesame neighborhood.
Will you come, Dr Sax, becausethis is just so helpful?
This is what we want to hear isthe research and the evidence
behind why gender matters andwhat's truly good for our kids
and how to make decisions, eventhough they may be contrary to
what everyone else is doing, toreally protect the souls of our
(43:38):
young, young children.
So, Dr Sax, can you mention thefour books that you have out
there right now and I believeyou're working on another one.
Maybe you wrapped it up already, but.
Dr. Leonard Sax (43:47):
So why Gender Matters?
Again, you want to be sure toget the updated second edition.
Boys Adrift also be sure to getthe updated second edition.
Girls on the Edge get theupdated second edition.
And the Collapse of Parentingyou want to get the updated
second edition, which just cameout October 1, which is hard to
find on Amazon.
(44:08):
When you go to Amazoncom andyou type in thank you, the
Collapse of Parenting, you'vegot the right one.
Amazon wants to sell you theold edition.
If you have any trouble findingit, go to my website,
leonardsasscom.
Click on books, click on theCollapse of Parenting and then
you'll get the link to get thenew edition.
And I also want to make a plugfor the audio book.
For the first time ever, thepublisher allowed me to read the
(44:30):
audio book.
Awesome, and you can.
Wherever you get your audiobooks, you can click on the free
excerpt, which begins with astory from the office where mom
brought in her daughter,six-year-old daughter, who was
sick with a fever and sorethroat, and I asked the daughter
to open her mouth and say ah.
(44:51):
And the daughter said no.
And I said mom, looks like I'mgoing to need your help here.
Would you please ask yourdaughter to open her mouth and
say ah.
And mom said her body, herchoice.
So you can listen to me readthat book, um, uh, wherever you
get your audio books.
Um, so that was great fun 10hours of audio book.
(45:12):
And the producer was.
It was 20, 20 hours ofrecording it was.
It was.
It was grueling over many, many, many sessions, but but it's
done.
Jordan Langdon (45:23):
Well, we love your voice and the face-to-face
is always preferred, but if wecould get you in our ear for a
long road trip across the UnitedStates or a good flight to
Europe or something, and andbinge the book on audio, we will
do it.
So, Dr Sax, thank you for beingwith us.
Thank you for being courageousand willing to go up against
your colleagues and authors thatare getting a lot of publicity,
(45:44):
to share the truth and to godeeper than just what the eye
can see.
That's what I appreciate aboutyou is that you're willing to
dig down and get at it at theroot level, versus just kind of
plucking the head off thedandelion to make things look
good or be acceptable to society.
So if you'll come and join usagain, we'll have you back.
(46:05):
There's all kinds of things wecan talk about with you, but
appreciate you coming back onthe Families of Character show
and guys.
If you want anything of DrSax's books link to the research
article, you can find that inour show notes.
So just scroll down here inthis episode and you will find
links to purchase his books andto read his research articles.
Dr. Leonard Sax (46:26):
Thanks again for inviting me.
Jordan Langdon (46:27):
Thank you, yes, thank you so much and, guys,
we'll catch you on anotherepisode of our show real soon.
Please be sure to share thisepisode.
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