Readiness/prepared to launch: what motivates it

Almost 20 years down the line, what Dr. Sax wrote in “Boys Adrift” still rings very true today. This certainly applies to the five factors he pointed out to explain boys’ “failure to launch” phenomenon (change from experiential to cognitive learning and earlier; video games; ADHD medication; plastic pollution; role model for boys). More importantly, the greater insight in the book points to what lies behind this “failure to launch” phenomenon: MOTIVATION. And this provides another way to reorganize these factors but also a fresh look at the phenomenon itself. Reorganising the factors according to motivation, again the assaults for diminished masculinity come from all angles. There is the environment (pollution), biology (ADHD medication), psychology (boys are generally motivated more by a sense of being in charge/competitiveness rather than pleasing their teachers or in harmony with peers), education (heavier focus on cognitive tasks, sit still, lack of individuality, etc), and of course the issue of role model too. Again, what we see here is that although both girls and boys are exposed to environmental and biological factors, girls are more shielded from the other factors, so they are less scarred.

The bigger question, however, is if/when boys are not motivated to take care of girls (something might easily dismissed as too gender stereotypical, too old fashioned nowadays), then what exactly motivates boys? Success, be strong, social status (fame) and accumulation of power or wealth used to be the likely candidates. But besides being quite old-fashioned, they are often not an end by themselves, but instead just a means. Again achieving all those used to attract (pretty) girls (they still are; but maybe again can be said to be old-fashioned). So if those are no longer the goals, what is left to motivate the boys to do well? Even let’s use the more up-to-date goals—say happiness or meaning of life, again what constitutes a happy or meaningful life often highlights relationships, and more specifically close social relationships. Although a heavy emphasis on romantic relationships alone has been pointed out as a problem in itself, close social relationships often do include a partner, except for monks and nuns. So the question comes back: when girls do well themselves, can look after themselves, no longer NEED boys, what are boys there for?

Another related question is why this phenomenon seems to apply more to boys (& more particularly boys in better-off situations, as Dr. Sax also specifically points to an observation that foreign male workers are filling up the space for typical male manual jobs in the U.S.), while girls are doing well and generally motivated to do well. What motivates these girls and foreign male workers? One possible explanation is that both girls and poorer boys have to work hard to get what they get, be where they are, so the possibility of losing these opportunities hangs. The opportunities haven’t come easily, so they are cherished. For richer boys, on the other hand, the opportunities are always there, thus they are taken for granted, not something one needs to work to get. In other words, motivation might be a rich person’s problem. If this is true, would this be merely a perspective gap or a curse of the privileged?