The Megyn Kelly Show - Truth About Gender Differences, Danger of "Affirm Only" Care, and Parenting Today, with Dr. Leonard Sax | Ep. 474

Episode Date: January 18, 2023

Megyn Kelly is joined by Dr. Leonard Sax, psychologist and best-selling author of "The Collapse of Parenting" and "Why Gender Matters," to discuss the truth about gender differences, how boys are less motivated in school now than girls, how men and women smell and hear differently, how the current trans activist movement leads to more gender stereotyping and discourages progress, the American Academy of Pediatrics prioritizing politics over science, the lie from trans activists about suicide, the danger of "affirm only" care for kids, President Biden’s position on affirming gender identity, how American parents are abandoning their responsibilities, the dangers of social media, parenting tips for callers and viewers, and more.Find Sax's "Why Gender Matters" book here: https://www.amazon.com/Why-Gender-Matters-Second-Differences/dp/0451497775/Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Oh, I am so, so excited for today's show. I've been wanting to get this guest on forever. I mean, 15 years I've wanted to talk to him. As it turns out, you may or may not have been told boys and girls are different. This used to be a pretty uncontroversial opinion for anyone with any interaction with children or life. Their differences are both obvious and not so obvious, and they deeply impact every aspect of a child's development. Today, we take a deep dive into this topic,

as well as parenting in 2023, gender, and whether it's real or just a mere social construct, as we're told, with practicing physician, psychologist, and bestselling author, Dr. Leonard Sachs. Sachs is the author of books like Why Gender Matters. Oh, Why Gender Matters. He wrote it. He said it. And The Collapse of Parenting, How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grownups. Dr. Sachs, welcome to the show. It's great to have you. Thanks so much for inviting me.

Oh, so my husband and I are big fans of yours. We bought your book, Why Gender Matters, right around when we had our first child, which was 2009, a boy. We have three kids, boy, girl, boy, and read it. And it's literally still on my nightside table at our place in New Jersey, where we go over the summers. And I'm reminded, you know, I pick it up every once in a while, like, yes, okay, it's all in here. So glad we read it. Recommend it to everybody.

You've updated it. You've written more. But first, let me just start by thanking you for that book. Yeah, I was shaking my head no, because that's the first edition, which was published back in the medieval era. Yeah, 2005. Only had about a half a page on transgender. But the publisher asked me to write a new edition, which now has 12 chapters, the last

four of which are gender nonconforming, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex, because a lot of things have changed in the last 15 years. I know. I remember laughing because I said to Doug, sex has probably been canceled by now. You can't write a book called Why Gender Matters. Does he have any sort of a platform? And you're everywhere. You haven't been canceled. Somehow, you've managed not to be canceled. You're one of the most respected physicians on this issue. Well, I did an interview with Al Roker on the Today Show, which is still up there. But if you look at the latest comments, there's all kinds of rage, people saying,

how is this even allowed? The Today Show should take this down because this is totally unacceptable. What you're telling me is that there are some NBC viewers who are flipping out over your recitation of actual facts. All right. I'm going to try to take a minute, get my arms around that one. So let's just start with this because you are an expert on all of it, on gender in general. Yes, we're going to get into whether it's real and all that, but also on just parenting girls, parenting boys, what we're doing right, what we're doing wrong, America versus other countries. So social media, all this stuff. So there's a lot to go over. Let me just start broad based and say what I mean, we started with there are differences between boys and girls. Yes,

we know the obvious ones, the physical ones, but it goes well beyond that. It goes well beyond anatomy on the outside that we can see. Explain. Well, there's been so much exciting recent research. In one study very recently, researchers recruited pregnant women in the third trimester of pregnancy and did high-resolution MRI scans looking at the baby in its mother's womb, these babies in the third trimester, and found dramatic differences in the wiring of the brain, in the baby's brain, in its mother's womb, with boys' brains having richer connections between cerebellum and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, girls' brains having richer connections within the left hemisphere

that the boys did not have. When I speak at this as schools, if I'm allowed, and I'll check in advance to make sure I'm allowed to quote scripture, I'll quote Genesis chapter 1 verse 27. In the image of God, he created him, male and female, he created them. It doesn't say black and white, he created them. It doesn't say Asian and Hispanic, he created them. Black, white, Asian, and Hispanic are man-made. But male and female are hardwired. You are born male or female. And the irony is that we've got all this new research providing such compelling evidence that that is so. But if you read the New York Times or listen to National Public Radio, you wouldn't know it. That study was never mentioned.

And it goes beyond, as I say, what you have between your legs. It goes to how you smell things, how you see things, your ability to hear things. I mean, there are actual physical differences between us. Yeah. New York Times actually did publish my article on sex differences in smell and the ability to detect odors. It turns out that girls and women are better able to detect odors than boys and men. Well, how much better? Twice as good? Five times as sensitive? Ten times? No. It turns out that for many odors, it's 100,000 times more sensitive. So I describe a story from my own practice where a husband and wife went away on vacation in August. It's hot. They come back a week later to their kitchen and the woman steps in and she says, oh my gosh, something died. It rotted. I think I'm

going to throw up. And the man says, I don't smell anything. And they get upset with each other because the woman's like, how can you not smell this? It's overpowering. It's disgusting. And the man's like, I do not smell anything. And they get angry with each other because no one ever told them that you're experiencing different sensory worlds. And I spoke to the man and I said, look, you can't be angry with your wife any more than a blind man can be angry with a sighted person. The smell is real. It's overpowering. It's intense. She smells it. You don't. And I said to the woman, you can't be angry with your husband any more than a sighted person can be angry with a blind person. He doesn't smell it. He's not kidding or fooling or lying. He doesn't smell it. You know, some

pastors do premarital counseling with a man and a woman before they get married. I think this should be part of it. You know, over my 30 some years as a family doctor, I've seen a lot of marriages end. You know, and if you just watch TV, you would think marriages end because of like adultery. Well, you know, I'll tell you what, in the real world, that doesn't happen very often because people are too busy. Um, why do marriages end? They end because the, the woman's like, how can you not smell that? Did you never pay attention to what I say? You don't listen. You don't hear. I think a man and a woman should understand. Mom is upset with her son because his room stinks. And she looks under the bed and there's old food rotting. And she says to her son, look, this is totally unacceptable. And he says, I don't smell anything.

What you have to explain to your son, if you're a woman, you have to explain, look, if you ever hope to live with a woman, the standard of cleanliness that will apply is not your standard, but hers. No food in the bedroom. And if you do take food in the bedroom, you got to get rid of it. You can't put it under the bed. Exactly. And it goes also to your son's hearing. You may be saying, oh, my daughter, she's such a good listener. My boys, they blow me off. It's not necessarily a blow off. Another story I share from my own practice. So I'm doing this yearly visit and, and in my practice in Maryland, we allowed an hour for physical. So I had plenty of time. So this teenage girl shared with me, she said, she said, you know, my father's always shouting at me and I really don't like that at all. So,

you know, I come home, I, I, I quietly go up to my bedroom. I closed the door. I really just don't want to have to deal with that. So a few days later, with the daughter's permission, I saw the father and I said, Hey, your daughter shared with me that you're always shouting at her. And he said, Dr. Sachs, I never want to shout at that girl. You hear what I'm saying, Julia? I said, Okay, yeah. And I explained to him, there are sex differences in hearing and also age differences. Children hear better than adults.

And girls and women hear better than boys and men at every age. So I said to this man, you're 45 years old. You're a man. You're talking to a 15-year-old girl. Whisper. I mean, don't literally whisper, but lower your voice way, way down. And a few weeks later, I saw the girl again. And she said to me, she said, oh my goodness, my father can actually talk like a normal person. He was happy to make the accommodation. No one

had ever explained to him. There are hardwired differences in hearing, which I lay out at great detail in the second edition of Why Gender Matters. Hardwired differences in hearing, which I lay out at great detail in the second edition of Why Gender Matters. Hardwired differences in hearing, vision, and smell, which are not just in our species, incidentally. They're in gorillas, chimpanzees, all across the primate order. We find these hardwired sex differences in hearing, vision, and smell of great magnitude, and most people are completely unaware of them. And it goes beyond that as well, because children learn differently. You write about how small groups work great for girls, not so great for boys. Art.

Girls draw very differently than boys have given a blank piece of paper and markers. And this could affect the way the teachers react to them. Interactions with teachers, very different for girls and boys. All this is actually what led us to put our kids in single-sex education. Our boys are in single-sex, you know, boy and our daughters in single-sex girl, and we'll see what happens at the high school level. But right now they're all there. So in any event, my point is it goes beyond just physical characteristics.

There are things happening in the minds that make them learn differently that could be affecting the feedback you're getting from your teacher right now at school? Absolutely. And I've seen this on so many occasions. Again, in my own practice, mom has four sons and her oldest, Andrew, came home one day in tears. was in first grade um the teacher had given had asked everyone to draw whatever they want and andrew had draw drawn a knight uh cutting off the head of a dragon and then the teacher gave gold stars to the kids whose pictures she liked and andrew did not get a gold star he came home in tears. He proceeded, he was throwing out all of his drawing materials. He'd love to draw, but he's throwing it all in the garbage and, and he's in tears. And mom is trying to understand what's going on. Why are you throwing

out your, your, your, your, all your crayons and all your drawing stuff. And she finally gets a story out of him. And she called the teacher and said, my son came home in tears and says, he doesn't ever want to draw again because you gave everyone else a gold star and you didn't give him a gold star. And she said, that's correct. He drew a violent picture, a depiction of death, a violent death. And I don't want to condone violence. What about Columbine? What about Virginia Tech? And mom said, but he's a six-year-old boy. And the teacher said, that's right. That's why I did not make a referral. I thought of making a referral, but I didn't. So she yanked him out of that school and put him in a boys' school. And he has done very well. This was more than 20 years ago. He went on to Stanford on a football scholarship, and he's done very well. This was more than 20 years ago. He went on to Stanford

on a football scholarship and he's done very well. But if teachers don't understand these different... Look, when you give kids a blank piece of paper and a box of crayons at six years of age

and you say to them, draw whatever you want, girls and boys draw very different things. Girls draw people, pets, flowers, and trees, usually two, three, or four arranged on a horizontal ground. About nine out of 10 boys draw something very different. They draw a scene of action at a moment of dynamic change, like a monster eating an alien, a rocket smashing into a planet.

In my book, Why Gender Matters, I show that these differences derive from hardwired differences in the visual systems. Humans, like all higher primates, Why Gender Matters, I show that these differences derive from hardwired differences in the visual system. Humans, like all higher primates, have two visual systems. One that's looking for speed, direction, change in direction, collision. Another that's looking for color, detail, and texture. We now know that girls and females across primate order have more resources in the system that's looking for color detail and texture boys have more resources in the system that's looking for speed direction change in direction and this appears to help explain why most boys draw collisions

action and most girls are drawing people flowers, and trees with lots of detail, 10 or more crayons. Boys are using six or fewer crayons with a predominance of black, gray, silver, and blue. These are hardwired differences. If teachers understand these differences, then they can engage and motivate boys. But instead, I've been in classrooms where the teacher is saying, I have visited over 460 schools over the last 22 years. I've seen this a lot. The teacher is saying, oh, Emily, I love your picture with the girls and the flowers. Carry on.

And then she comes to Jason and she's saying, Jason, what is this a picture of? And Jason explains, it's a car crash. And these two cars are being crushed between these cars. And the teacher is saying, Jason, you know, a car crash. It's really violent. People are going to get killed or paralyzed. You know, look at Emily's picture. It's so nice. No one's getting wounded. Do you really have to draw such violent pictures? And the result is not boys who run and draw pictures of flowers. The result is boys who say drawing is for girls. I've seen

this firsthand. I was in another elementary school. Teacher said, free time. You can do whatever you want. And the girls were sitting and drawing. And one boy was running around the room making a buzzing noise. And I got in his way and I stopped him. And I said, how come you don't want to sit and draw? And he said, drawing's for girls. Drawing is for girls. The lack of awareness of gender differences has the unintended consequence of reinforcing

gender stereotypes because this teacher, like most teacher has received no instruction in these hardwired differences in what girls and boys want to draw. She's got one more boy who's decided that drawing is for girls. If you understand gender differences, then you can break down gender stereotypes and you can have boys who love to draw, boys who love football and video games who love to draw. I've seen this. Yes, I know. And you have also pointed out that if you look at a boy's drawing of, let's say, a family or people, you're going to see most likely stick figures with not much going on in the facial. A hundred percent. I've seen that a million times.

And if the teacher isn't well-educated, she could think he's not trying. He's sort of phoning it in like that's not what a person doesn't look like a stick figure with a very little facial expression, but there is a real difference there in the genders. And on top of that, you talk about how you take four girls and put them at a small table in a classroom. That's going to work out beautifully. Not so much on the boyfriend. Why is that? So girls on average want to affiliate with the teacher, want to please the teacher. Incidentally, this is true not only in humans, this is true in chimpanzees. Richard Rangham and colleagues at Harvard observing chimpanzees in the wild find the mommy chimpanzee is teaching

the young chimpanzee how to fish for termites. You put the stick in the termite mound, let it sit there, and then pull it out and take the termites off and eat them. And the girl chimpanzee is paying attention and then doing what the mommy is showing her. The boy chimpanzee is totally blowing off mom and running off and wrestling with the other guys. These are chimpanzees. This is not a social construct. It's observed in chimpanzees. We find the same in our own species. On average, the girls want to please the teacher. They're listening to what the teacher says. The four girls are at the table and the teachers assign them to talk about the difference between cell walls in plants and cell membranes in animals.

And that's what they're talking about. So I'm in this classroom and I'm with the four boys at the back of the room. And the teacher said, okay, now I want you to look at your team members and I want you to talk about the difference between cell walls in plants and cell membranes in animals. So I'm at the back of the room with these four boys and the boys look at each other. And one boy says to another boy, he says, so when did you move here? I don't recognize you. And the boy said, well, we just moved here from Dallas. He says, and he really misses Dallas because you don't have any football here in South Carolina. And the other three boys are like, no football?

How can you say there's no football? What about U of SC? What about Clemson? Of course we have football. And the boy from Dallas dismisses that and says, that's just college football. That's not have football. And the boy from Dallas dismisses that and says, that's just college football. That's not real football. And now we have the four boys engaged in a lively debate about the virtues of the NFL versus NCAA Division I. And that's the end of the day as far as cell walls in plants and cell membranes in animals.

Because among boys, disrespecting the teacher can raise your status in the eyes of the other boys. And when that other boy says, hey, I don't recognize you. When did you move here? If the other boy were to say, oh, we're not supposed to talk about that. We're supposed to talk about cell walls and plants and cell membranes and animals. He would greatly lower his status in the eyes of the other boys. So independent small group work doesn't work very good in sixth grade with boys. And again, if teachers don't understand that, they've got the boys goofing off and the girls doing well. We've got this growing gender gap in academic achievement. You had Warren Farrell on last year. You know all about this.

Growing gender gap in academic achievement. Boys doing much worse than girls across the board. White, black, Asian and Hispanic, affluent, middle income, low income, New York, Texas doesn't matter. This is a very widespread phenomenon. And. It's really it's a constant surprise to me how it has changed the culture of the school. So I was speaking to students at another school. And we had a whole school assembly, and I'm talking to them. And when I speak to students, it's always question and answer.

It's not a formal presentation. It's question and answer. So I said to the students, I said, this next question is just for the boys. Gentlemen, I was walking through the hallway and I saw the principal's honor roll. And on the principal's honor roll, there are 19 girls and three boys. Can any of you boys explain to me why there's 19 girls and three boys on the principal's honor roll? Why aren't there more boys? And several boys raised their hand and a call on them. And they all gave some variation on the answer. Girls are smarter.

Wow. They believe this. Now, to me, this is a surprise because I'm an old guy. When I graduated from my public high school in 1977, we had an honors assembly and almost all the kids up on the stage were boys. The winner of the poetry award was a boy. The editor of the school newspaper, Andy Borowitz, who I'm sure you know, writes for the New Yorker magazine. He was a boy. He was the editor of our high school newspaper. They were all boys. Now my high school in Ohio still has a honors assembly. It's almost all girls. Why did this happen? DNA can't change in 30 years or 50 years. Well, the short answer, and Warren Farrell and I are singing in harmony on this point,

not in unison, but in harmony. The short answer is motivation. 30 years ago, 50 years ago, boys wanted to be the top student. 60 years ago, number one hit song in the United States, don't know much about history. And young man singing, now I don't claim to be an A student, but I'm trying to be. Trying to be. Maybe by being an A student baby, I'm trying to be. Maybe by being an A student, baby, I could win your love for me. He goes on to mention French geometry and trigonometry as subjects in which he's going

to try harder to earn an A rather than the B because he believes that by earning an A, he will raise his status in the eyes of the pretty girl. That was American culture a generation ago. Not anymore. You cannot imagine Drake or Bruno Mars singing a song about how they want to get a good mark in French, except it's a joke. Working hard to get a good mark in school is now seen as unmasculine. So the short answer to the question, why are boys now doing less well than their sisters, is that boys are now less motivated than their sisters are. That wasn't true a generation ago. It's true today. This is a focus of my book, Boys Adrift, the subtitle, The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and underachieving young men. And this again affects affluent white families

in Manhattan, just as much as it affects low-income Spanish-speaking families in Grand Prairie, Texas. And I've spoken to both. It's a very robust phenomenon. But all of this is also further evidence that gender is a real thing. It's not a social construct. All of this gender is affecting the way we hear, we see, we interact, we interact with the teacher, we interact the way we learn. You know, we could go down the line. You have an interesting chapter in one of the books talking about how there may be a gender gap when it comes to pay in America. It's not just because, oh, you know what, it's a sexist society.

It could very well be because women are less likely to ask for a raise. Men are more likely to go in there and say, I want more money. So we have to dig down a little deeper than what we're told. Let me argue with you there, though, because that's very much Warren Farrell's position. This is one point where Warren and I are not in agreement. Warren Farrell has published books showing that most of the gender gap in pay is due to the fact that women tend to prefer professions like nursing and education, or I shouldn't say prefer. Women are more likely than men to go into professions like education and nursing.

Men are more likely than women to go into fields like computer science and engineering, which pay much more than nursing and education. And of course, that's absolutely right. However, when you look at what young people in the United States are actually earning, and we now have good recent data on this, look at young Americans, 24 to 35 years of age, who are single, who do not have children at home. You find that young women are now earning almost 20% more than young men. Now, how can both these statements be true?

It is a true statement that across the United States, when you control for all the factors that Warren Farrell brings to our attention, control for number of hours worked each week, control for who they're working for and what their job description is, a man and a woman working the same job for the same employer, same number of hours a week, with the same background and qualifications, the man is earning 8% more than the woman across the United States. That's a fact. However, when you look at men and women under 35, no kids at home, women are earning 20% more than the man. How can both those statements be true? Both those statements are true. How to reconcile the difference? Because the man and the woman are not earning, working the same job. Women who've earned a four-year degree now outnumber men. Young women who've earned a four-year degree now outnumber men. Young women

who've earned a four-year degree now outnumber men by three to two. So the woman is an assistant banker at the local bank, and her boyfriend is working a minimum wage entry-level job because she earned a four-year degree and he dropped out. So gender really matters and it has these consequences. But young men are now less motivated, less likely than their sisters to earn a four-year degree, less likely to earn an advanced degree. You know, when I went to medical school, medical school was 50-50. At Harvard Medical School, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, women now outnumber men three to two at medical school. Yeah.

And that's typical law school as well. Because women are working harder. Well, I do think it's interesting because in your your book this is from why gender matters uh you you get into economist linda babcock studying babcock studying students uh graduating from carnegie mellon with a master's in a business related field you write she found the starting salaries of the men were about eight percent higher than those of the women um but then she looked to figure out why is it just because we're a bunch of sexist pigs in corporate America? And you say she concluded the men had asked for more. The men had asked for 57% of the men had asked for more money and only 7% of the female students had asked. And I do think that's

fascinating because again, it kind of goes back to the way we're built. Like men are typically bigger risk takers than women. And I don't know if this one's right, but I feel like women also fear rejection more intensely. Well, I can tell you as a man, men fear rejection too, but girls and women are more likely to want to please the person in charge. Men are on average more willing to push back and challenge. And again, just because that's hardwired doesn't mean we have to accept that. And I have led many workshops on empowering girls to take risks, to ask for more. Because again, why that robust 8% difference, a man and woman working the same job, same employer, same qualifications, the man is getting paid 8% more because he asked for more money. If you're in that job interview and the employer says, well, we can offer 80,000 a year. The man says, well, I have another offer here for 110,000.

The employer will say, well, we can't match 110, but we could sweeten this maybe to 86, 8% more. And that's what he gets. It turns out he was totally lying. He was just playing a negotiator's game. He didn't have that offer. The woman is much less likely, Professor Babcock and other has found, to say, no, I want more. Can you give me more? And okay, there may be a hardwired basis to that but we can overcome that okay a big part of my book why gender matters and girls on the edge is to empower girls to to ask for more to find your voice to be a leader uh and we have to realize that girls may be at a hardwired disadvantage. So we need to work that much harder. What girls need to succeed is different from what boys need to succeed. For that boy, you may need to say, hey, you know, you need to tone down the disrespect a little bit.

You need to be a little more courteous. You need to listen a little more and maybe talk a little less. That's what that boy needs. That girl needs just the opposite. She needs to find her voice. She needs to be encouraged to speak up and disagree. What girls need is different from what boys need. And there's a hardwired basis to that. That doesn't mean that you need to accept that, but you need to understand what girls need is different from what boys need. So all of this, Doc, is to me, one of the many reasons it's interesting. It's interesting as a mother to hear because I have boys and girls. That's interesting. But one of the reasons is we're now basically told that if you just get a sex change operation by changing,

having your penis and your balls cut off and somebody building a vagina, you're now a woman. You're a woman. And we've talked on this show many times as women about how, you know what, there's a lot more to it than that. And by the way, a fake constructed vagina is not that doesn't make you a woman. That's not that's not what we are. Just that. But reading your book again and getting ready for the show just reminded me, it's just sort of, it's not like I didn't know a lot of this. I am a woman, but it's just a reminder that there are so many innate differences between the sexes. Everyone used to know this, whether they could put it into language or not. They just knew it

on an instinctual level. And yet all around us in today's day and age, they're trying to sort of deprogram us out of that fundamental biological understanding we've had since birth. They're trying to tell us none of it's real. And it does feel like gaslighting. I know that term's overused, but what they're doing to us now on gender feels like gaslighting. Well, and so much of this really upsets me because one of the ironic consequences of the transgender activism is that it is actually reinforcing gender stereotypes. fly combat aircraft for the United States Air Force. And if you go in her bedroom, she's got it wallpapered with fighter aircraft and F-22s and dangling from her light is a fighter plane, F-22 or something like that.

She can recite all the statistics to you. And that's great. That's great. She also loves to do ballet, incidentally. She does ballet, tap, and jazz, six hours a week of instruction. She's a knitter, I heard you say. And she knits and crochets. And that's great, I'm old enough to remember the Sally ride era when the mantra was that a girl can do anything. A girl can be, uh, an astronaut, a girl can be combat infantry girl can be anything, but we're not in that era anymore. And today when a teenage girl says, I want to be a combat, uh, people will literally say things like, well, what are your preferred pronouns? Are you transitioning? And that's what's really weird and troubling about this transgender moment is that it is hardening gender stereotypes.

Look, girls can do anything. And a girl wants to be combat infantry, that's great. It doesn't mean she wants to transition to the male role. Boys can do anything. But if a boy wants to do ballet, it doesn't mean you change his name to Emily and put him in a dress. You let him watch Mikhail Baryshnikov. Men can be great at ballet. It doesn't mean they're no longer men. It's impoverished the understanding of the complexity of human gender. And again, in Why Gender Matters, I have this graph. You know, 30 years ago, we thought gender was a one-dimensional continuum. You were masculine or you were feminine. If you were less masculine, you were more feminine. That's clearly not

accurate. Gender is two dimensions. You can be masculine or not. You can be feminine or not. You can be both, which is androgynous. You can be neither, which is undifferentiated. There's no order of rank here. Part of becoming a fulfilled human being is figuring out where you belong on this two-dimensional graph. So in my own marriage, I've been married for 32 years. I do all the grocery shopping because I love shopping for groceries. My wife hates it. She does all the lawnmowing and she fixes the lawnmower. I would have no idea what to do with a broken lawnmower. I was raised by a single mom and we called Vic DeGeronimo, our handyman. He would come and fix everything.

And that's fine. That's fine. Again, the transgender activists are trying to flatten this, that if you're a boy and you like ballet and you don't like violent video games, well, then maybe you're actually a girl. It's psychotic. And by psychotic, I mean it is utterly detached from reality. Humans have always been a complex mix of masculine and feminine. And it is weird that in 2023, with all the evidence we have, that this deranged notion of gender has captured the New York Times, National Public Radio, Harvard Graduate School of Education, University of Texas, Austin. I debated Professor Rebecca Bigler, Distinguished Professor of Psychology, that's her title, at University of

Texas, Austin. Her preferred pronouns are Z and Zer. Now she happens to be, in her terminology, a straight cisgender female, but she regards the pronouns he and she as creations of the heteronormative patriarchy. So she preferred the pronouns Z and Zer because she believes that all enlightened people should be trying to undermine and deconstruct the heteronormative patriarchy. Bigler, if it was in your power, would you eliminate the Girl Scouts? And she said, yes. She said, I think the idea of scouting is great, but the idea that children assigned female should do it separately from children assigned male is just wrong. It's reinforcing the heteronormative binary. And I said, okay, so you want boys and girls at age 11 to go camping together in the same tent and she said absolutely I said and I turned to the audience I said okay I think we've arrived at an irreconcilable difference to me what girls need to become confident at scouting is different from what boys need and I've seen this firsthand again because we do live in a

sexist society and when you put 11 year old girls-old girls and boys together, the boys will say, oh, I know how to do that. And the girls will step back and let the boys do it. If you want girls to be confident with a knife, if you want girls to be confident with a sledgehammer, that 11-year-old girl needs an all-girl setting so that she can find her voice, so she can develop her confidence. And I'm not arguing for single-sex education. I did for many years, and I was a real advocate. And I launched an organization called the National Association for Single-Sex Public Education, and we had some success. When we launched, there were seven girls' public schools in the United States and one boys' school. When the ACLU shut us down in 2012, there were 110 girls' public schools and 70 boys' public schools. Wow. But I no longer campaigned for girls' schools and boys' schools because I saw

if teachers don't have training, it can reinforce gender stereotypes. And I actually reached out to ACLU because on paper, we had the same concerns. If teachers have no training and you put them in a room with all boys, they start teaching boys using sports analogies. If teachers have no training and you put them in a room with just girls, they start teaching girls algebra using shopping analogies. If teachers have no training and you put them in a room with just girls, they start teaching girls algebra using shopping analogies. Well, let me tell you something. A lot of girls hate to shop and a lot of boys don't like football. It reinforces gender stereotypes. The single sex format can be wonderful. Teachers know how to use it. It can break down gender

stereotypes so that the same boy who loves football will love Jane Eyre, will love Emily Dickinson. So that the same girl who loves Kylie Jenner will love computer science, will love physics. I've seen this. But it's only if the teachers have had the right kind of training. If you just put teachers in a single-sex classroom without training, without that institutional understanding of how to do this well, it doesn't lead to good outcomes. That's fascinating. I'll say that last remark reminded me of a time I was shopping last year. And we're in Connecticut, and it's a hoity sort of area. And there was a sign out in front of the Sephora, which is where we go for makeup, that said something like, don't worry, ladies, your husband approves. Come on in and buy it. Something like that. I was like,

oh my God, what the hell is going on with your stupid sign, Sephora? I'll buy my own makeup. I don't give a damn whether my husband approves. I don't run stuff by him. What kind of messaging is this? For me, for the other women in town, for the boys or the girls like this is effed up or so we still have some problematic things when it comes to messaging to both sexes. There's a lot to get into. When we come back from the break, we're going to start a discussion on transgender youth and the messaging from groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics, which Dr. Sachs has been very publicly critical of. And very few other doctors have had the nerve to do that. All right, so stand by for much, much more. We talked about gender stereotypes. Just a personal moment,

if you'll allow me. I grew up in the 1970s. I was born in 1970 and I had absolutely no interest in wearing a dress, in doing anything girly. I didn't much like dolls. All I wanted for Christmas was a stretch Armstrong and an incredible Hulk. My mom used to beg me to play with Barbies. I'm like, I'm not into it. My hair was cut short. I'll show you one picture of me with a family. We cut out the rest of the family. I've shown this before, but there I am in my cowgirl outfit, which is all I ever wore. There's a reason I insisted on wearing it to the Olin Mills photo shoot. My cow, with my guns, I had my guns on my hip and wanted to pretend fake shoot things. And then here's my very favorite photo of myself, Doc, when I was just a little girl. I don't know if I was maybe six or seven here. It's me looking

like a boy on a tire swing. I think most people look at that photo and say, that's a boy in my jeans and my Navy sweatshirt, which I loved and my very short hair loved it. Okay. Now look at me. I'm all woman. And today's effed up society would have told that little girl who was quote gender nonconform, whatever we're calling it now, that she might actually be a boy and she might consider having her breasts cut off and preventing puberty and then going directly on cross-sex hormones. And just the thought of it makes me very, very angry. Yeah, well, I share your anger. In 2018, the American Academy of Pediatrics, which is our nation's largest group by far representing pediatricians, published guidelines. Now, I have been reading the guidelines of the AAP for 35 years since I was in my training to be a doctor at the University of Pennsylvania.

And they're usually evidence-based and rock solid. They bring in the leading people to look at all the evidence and come to consensus about what is the standard of care with regard to asthma or delayed development or whatever the issue might be. So they convened a panel to issue guidelines for evaluation and management of kids with gender dysphoria, boys who say they're girls, girls who say they're boys. And the guidelines are unequivocal. They say that if a boy says he's a girl, then you are to transition him to the female role. You are to change the birth certificate. Justin never existed.

You're going to change the process that will take custody away from the parents. So I wrote a letter to the AAP in which I pointed out that that recommendation was not based in evidence. So prior to those guidelines, the standard of care was reasonably termed watchful waiting. So a six-year-old boy says he's a girl. Okay, well, you're going to try to understand why that is so. Sometimes it's because his older brother is bullying him and the older brother doesn't bully the sister. So he figures, well, if I'm a girl, I won't get bullied. Other times it's because this boy likes ballet and doesn't like lightsabers. And the only people he knows who likes ballet are girls. So you wait, you show them, look, you can study ballet, but you'll study ballet as a boy,

not as a girl. And that strategy was called watchful waiting. The American Academy of Pediatrics denounced that strategy and said that is bigotry, pure and simple. We know, the guidelines said, we know that conversion therapy, watchful waiting is conversion therapy, the AAP assisted, and we know that conversion therapy does not work. And they had a scholarly citation evidence. So I looked up that scholarly citation. It's one study published 30 years ago, a study of adult gay men showing that trying to get them to be straight didn't work. And I wrote in my comment, your guidelines are not based in evidence. In support of your claim that watchful waiting is bigoted conversion therapy, you cite a study from 30 years ago of adult gay men. The pediatricians should understand that children are not adults.

And anyone studying this issue should understand that gender identity, whether you're male or female, is not the same thing as sexual orientation, whether you're male or female, is not the same thing as sexual orientation, whether you're gay or straight. The study you cited is completely irrelevant to the claim you made. The claim you made has no basis in evidence. So they reviewed my letter and then published it. And it's still there. If you read the official guidelines, they used to have a menu at the top.

And you could click on letters and you'd go right to my letter. They've removed the menu. So you don't know that there are letters. You now have to scroll to the bottom of the guidelines. But the letters are still there. They didn't take them down. And there are now three other letters from three pediatricians who said exactly what I said. And two of them mentioned my, because mine was the first, they mentioned my letter and said, Dr. Sachs is absolutely right. You guys need to change

the guidelines. Usually, so I've been reading these guidelines for 30 years. Usually when some doctor writes in and says these guidelines are totally stupid and don't make any sense, usually the authors will respond a few weeks later and say, well, the doctor has misunderstood and didn't understand the implications of this study. They've never responded. There's never been any response. The letters are still there.

The American Academy of Pediatrics is now making guidelines that are based not in evidence, but in politics. And it is immensely harmful. Well, and we know that as parents, we can feel that. We felt it through COVID as well. But you're right, it's not evidence-based. And I read, I mean, I've heard different stats, but I read in one of your publications, if left alone, if your child comes to you and says, I'm feeling like I'm the opposite sex, if left alone, you wrote 88% will default back to their biological sex, if you just leave them alone. Yes, will detransition, will desist is the term that the scholars use. Desist means that this boy has decided he's no longer a girl. He's a boy.

And the leading researcher worldwide on this is Ken Zucker in Toronto, who's been studying these kids for 30 years and following them for 30 years. And he finds, okay, a six-year-old boy says to you, he is a girl. He's certain he's a girl. He wants to know when his penis is going to fall off. What is going on with that individual 15 years later? He's now in his early 20s. He turns out to be a gay man. He doesn't want to be a woman. He's not a woman. He's very happy as a gay man. That is, in some of these studies, the most common outcome of the boy who at three, four, five years of age insists he's a girl, he turns out to be a gay man. And he doesn't need medication. He doesn't

need surgery. He's perfectly happy as a gay man. There's a lot of variation. As I mentioned earlier, four of the 12 chapters in the new edition of my book, Why Gender Matters, is about those variations. Gender non nonconforming, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex. We need to understand that. But instead, as I said a moment ago, the ironic consequence of this transgender activism is a hardening of gender stereotypes. So this boy who loves ballet is being encouraged to start down that road that's going to lead to cross-sex hormones and castration. Well, and I know, and we'll pick this up, I'll take a quick break, but you've also written about

how just starting to transition your child because he says it's what he wants or she says it's what she wants, the studies also prove can be extremely damaging to them. All you hear from the woke crowd is they'll commit suicide if you don't. Dr. Sacks has got the other side of the story. It's the stats show it's often extremely damaging if you do. That's where we pick it up next. And then we'll get into some parenting advice, which we all could use in some of your calls as well. Stay with us. Don't forget, folks, you can watch us live on Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at noon east. Full video show at youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly. Get some clips there, too. Audio podcast free wherever you get your podcast. Check them out. pediatrics has been that they're pursuing ideology these days, not exactly science, not evidence-based recommendations. And of course, that's also true right up to the very top political levels of our country. The person with the most powerful microphone in the United States is right on board with the affirm, affirm, affirm strategy. Here's President Biden last spring.

To parents of transgender children, affirming your child's identity is one of the most powerful things you can do to keep them safe and healthy. What do you make of that? It's one of the most powerful things to keep them safe and healthy. Well, don't get me started on Joe Biden. He's been a tremendous disappointment. I really thought he would, he has no ballast. He has drifted very far to the left. But the fact that the President of the United States and the American Academy of Pediatrics endorse this transgender activism is, as I said before, a break immensely harmful. So I'll give you a very concrete example. I was hired as an expert witness in the case of a girl who was a girly

girl. Unlike you, she loved playing with Barbies. She dressed up as princesses for Halloween year after year. The parents showed me the pictures. And then at age 14, she was struggling with depression. And she found some TikTok videos that said, if you transition to the male role, you won't be depressed anymore because only girls are depressed. And so she announced she's a boy. And the parents were like, no, you're not a boy. So the 14-year-old girl contacted Child Protective Services, which swooped in and removed her from the house and put her in foster care with a family that would endorse her male identity. And the parents sued to regain custody. And the attorney hired me as an expert.

And so I'm talking one-on-one with the judge. This is all by Zoom. And I'm talking one-on-one with the judge. This is all by Zoom. And I'm talking one-on-one with the judge. And the judge is challenging me, saying, well, the American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines say, and I said, well, the American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines are not based in evidence. And the judge was very blunt. She said, Dr. Sachs, you're a family doctor. You have no academic appointment. You're not a professor at any leading university. You're asking me to accept your judgment over the official guidelines of the American Academy of Pediatrics. How am I supposed to do that? I think the judge has a very fair point. Family court judges tend to show great deference to authority. And the American Academy of Pediatrics and the President of the United States say one thing,

and I'm saying something else, the judge is going to defer to authority. Those parents lost custody of their child. That's what i mean when i say this is immensely harmful horrifying it is deeply horrifying the evidence to the contrary shows trying to pretend that actual gender doesn't matter that biological sex and it's linked to doesn't matter can have extremely harmful effects and you talk about some of this in your book, and I realize your detractors say, oh, those studies are 30 years old, and they weren't done in our more evolved society where we're more forgiving of this issue, and we support somebody who's transitioning. But just can you talk about the research that has looked in depth

at what happens when we try to change somebody's gender? Yeah. Well, as I said, we do have really good research. And a lot of this comes from the Netherlands, which is actually a very left of center country that's all in favor of transgender. Nevertheless, they found that after individuals transition, male becomes a female, female becomes male. And you follow that individual 20 years down the road, you find that those people who undergo transition are 19 times more likely to commit suicide compared with controls. There is no evidence that transitioning has any benefit in terms of psychiatric outcomes. And again, you've had Abigail Schreier on your show. You've had Lisa Lippman on your show. Your audience is aware of this, many of them, I'm sure,

that the blackmail that the transgender activists use, they'll say, would you rather have a live son or a dead daughter if your daughter wants to transition to the male role? It's not based in evidence. And we've now got so many stories of young people who are detransitioning. Kira Bell being probably one of the best documented. So this is a girl in the United Kingdom who at 16 was anxious and depressed and very unhappy as a girl and

found these videos online saying, if you just transition to being a boy, you'll be happy. And so she went to the National Health Service and they said, at 16 years of age, absolutely, here we go, and started transitioning her. And then she got a double mastectomy. And at age 22, she realized, you know what? I'm still anxious and depressed, except now I don't have breasts. I have facial hair. I've got a weird voice. It didn't do me any good. And she sued saying that she had never been properly counseled or evaluated. They just said, absolutely. Here you go. We believe in affirming. We affirm your transition. And so she, as a result, the Tavistock Clinic was shut down, the big gender clinic in England that was doing all this. The British have really put the brakes on this and said, look, we really don't

have any evidence that transitioning at 13, 14, 15, 16 years of age, does these kids any good? And it clearly has immense long-term risks, greatly decreases the risk that this young person will ever be fertile, will ever have a child of their own. I'm old enough to remember 10 years ago when the big thing was girls who were anorexic, girls who were way underweight, who insisted that they were fat and they wanted liposuction. But we weren't doing liposuction. We were still agents of reality. We did not affirm and help get that diet.

We did not affirm their psychotic self-assessment. No, they were not getting snaps when they went up on the stage in the middle school. Like, yeah, right on. Go on with your bad self. This thin woman who's like, help me diet, help me diet. I'm sure I'm fat. We weren't doing that. As I show in my book, Girls on the Edge, it's the same girls. Adolescence has always been tough. And again, as I've said before, we live in a sexist society, but what if you're not the pretty slender girl that has a million likes on Instagram? What if you're not that girl? What are you supposed to do? And girls have struggled with this now for many years. And 10 years ago, this girl was anorexic or cutting herself with razor blades.

Now the girl with the same struggles, the same issues, is deciding she's a boy. But 10 years ago, that girl who was cutting herself, we said, look, this is not good. And we need to take steps so that you don't do this anymore. But wait, this reminds me of something else. The same girl with the same struggle who says she wants to be a boy, the American Academy of Pediatrics is saying, absolutely, we're going to affirm that and, and pushing her down this road that leads nowhere good. You've said before, I've heard you say, this is one of the reasons why, and you know, of course you've also written

girls on the edge. You, you have a problem with the sexualization of our young girls. Our society is accepting this, and I'm with you on that. But it has many consequences. And one of them, you've said and written, is let's go to this girl you're talking about. She's not the pretty one. She's not the popular one. Maybe she's overweight. Maybe she's not naturally beautiful. She's feeling less than when she looks at Instagram and she looks around her middle

school or high school. This is a girl who's potentially a prime target for this rapid onset gender dysphoria. Lisa Lippman coined the phrase at Brown. Abigail's written about it. You've written about it. This is a prime candidate, potentially. It doesn't tend to be the super popular girls who fall into this. Hence, further suggestions that this is a social contagion and not an actual gender dysphoria case. And this girl, you make the point. is the nonstop images sexualizing the 16 year old. Like you, you're kind of not in our club is the message they're getting from the Kim Kardashians of the world. Unless you're able, you're constantly showing your booty,

your breasts, your absolutely fat free body, right? This is a problem. Like we ask all the time, why is there this, this rise, this sudden rise in the number of young people in particular saying that they're trans, this is a piece of it. It is. And I wrote an article a couple of years back when WAP, W-A-P 2020 was a hugely popular video. So for your audience who are not aware, I don't know if you allow, I'm not going to say the words, but it's filled with profanity. We do swear, but you don't need to.

It's a video about vaginal lubrication. So Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion make this video that's all about the vagina becoming wet. It's not about love. It's not about relationship. Those words never occur in the song. It's all about how great it is to have a wet vagina. Oh, my God. And Cardi B sings about how she wants to choke on a man's penis.

Want to gag, want to choke. Handcuffs, freak bitch, those are the words of the song. And I talked about how some girls look at this. And this was number one in the United States. Most popular video, 90 million downloads in one week. You know, usually the New York Times and Wall Street Journal don't agree on much, but they agreed on this. Their reviewers, both women, said this is the greatest thing ever. This is women finding their voice, affirming female sexuality.

New York Times and Wall Street Journal agreed this was the greatest thing ever. Across the board, this song was just phrased as being the most wonderful thing ever. And it is profane and obscene. If you watch the video starring Kylie Jenner, it is really offensive. And some girls look at this and they're like, yuck. If that's what it means to be a girl, maybe I'm not one. Maybe part of this explosion in teenage girls saying they want to be boys is because what they see in American popular culture, what's expected of girls and women,

want to gag, want to choke. Well, what if I don't? What if I'm a girl and I don't want to choke on a man's penis? Maybe I'm not a girl. Maybe I'm a boy. And just put that in TikTok and boom, you're going to get hit with a hundred videos, all of which have a million or more views about, hey, you know what?

You're unhappy because you're a girl, but maybe you're not a girl. Maybe the solution is to become a boy and then you'll be happy. And how is a 14 year old supposed to know better? She is adrift in a toxic culture. Which leads me perfectly to this next point. And that is, how do we prevent this? Most parents would like to prevent it. They don't want to just treat it once it's popped up.

Watchful waiting, I know you say, and Abigail's got some very, very helpful solutions, I think, in her book for if your kid comes to you and says this, what should you do? Number one is get them the hell off the internet. No more three hours in their room by themselves on Reddit and YouTube looking at these videos for people who do not have her best interest at heart. But there's a lot you can do before that. And the things that you recommend for good parenting of girls, of boys to prevent this, to prevent all sorts of bad things, depression, alienation, and so on, kind of all align, right? So what does that look like, you know, when it comes to social media and your interactions with your child?

Yeah, it got to begin with prioritizing the family. And so many parents are confused on this. They think the priority should be playdates with other same age kids. And the evidence is clear. The parent-child relationship has to come first. Cancel the play date. Make a family date instead. And this starts very early. I'm talking four years of age. You want to find time to do fun things with your kids.

Homework together doesn't count. I mean, homework together is great. We do it. But find time to do fun things with your kid, whether that's going on a hike in the park or tubing when it's snowing. Or my daughter now loves to go catamaranning on the catamaran, which we rent. It's $45. It's not expensive. Find fun things to do with your kids. Strengthen the parent-child relationship. That's primary. Second thing, find a community of women for girls, a community of men for boys. Again, we've got lots of research showing that a generation ago, this was common. It is now uncommon.

You've got to find opportunities, maybe at your church or synagogue or mosque or a community group, for your daughter to do something with a bunch of women. We drove to Ohio to visit my brother's family. And the highlight was Sarah and her Aunt Linda at Round the Table Yarns, which is this little shop in Shaker Heights, Ohio, where women sit around the table and knit together. And it's extremely diverse. And by diverse, I mean you've got women in their 20s

with women in their 70s. You've got white women. You've got black women. You've got low-income women, affluent women. You've got a community of women. Create connections. Search for them. Search for opportunities for girls to connect to women who are real women, not Instagram celebrities. Find opportunities for boys to connect with real men. And can I just say, can I just jump in? And is it also true, not trans women? Because I have to say, like, I'm not trying to sound bigoted or say I wouldn't have a trans person in my life. I do.

I have trans people in my life. But I would not want my daughter surrounded by multiple trans friends because of the Lisa Lippman thing, because of the Abigail Schreier thing. Even if my daughter's strong. And I think I would be concerned if I saw that. Yeah. The publisher has asked me to write a new edition of The Collapse of Parenting, which I'm working on now. There's going to be a new chapter on gender, because I think one factor driving this explosion in kids who are confused is parents who are unsure and uncertain and step back and let kids spend hours a day looking at videos online. And again, the point of the book is to empower parents to limit, govern, and guide what your kid is doing with their screens. Your kid,

as Abigail says, your kid should not be in their bedroom spending hours a day looking at screens because that's a really toxic world out there. Connect them to the real world. Connect them to your world. Connect them to the world of men and women you know. Girls need a community of women. Boys need a community of men. That used to be easy to find in the United States. Now it's hard, but it can be done.

You have to do it. I've heard you make an interesting point about time with your children. And I will say this, we're, as I mentioned, in this nice community and it's hard to find other kids who are free on the weekends to play. Everybody's overscheduled. Everybody's got three games a Saturday, three games a Sunday. And so it's like, you know, back when I was a kid, we'd run over to the neighbor's house, knock on the door, we'd play. We'd come back when the streetlights came on, hang out with our parents, had to have dinner together every night. So you had a good mix of friends and family, leading very different lives now. But I know that you've

made the point, if you are said big, busy parent who has an overscheduled child, don't kid yourself. Driving the kid from A to B is, it can be good. You can make it, but it's not exactly the quality time you're looking for. Yeah. So some of the research, and again, my, my brand, if you like, is I'm always evidence-based. I'm always finding studies to support the claims I'm making and not just going off the cuff guessing. And one of the studies I cite in this regard, we've got a number of them, but I'll just tell you about one. Frank Algard and his colleagues looked at adolescents coast to coast and asked them, in the last seven days, how many evening meals have you had at home with at least one parent?

Zero, one, two, three, four, five, six, or seven. And found this huge effect. The more evening meals you have at home with a parent, the less likely that kid is to be anxious or depressed. The more likely that kid is to have a positive self-concept. We've got many, many such studies now. You've got to fight for supper at home with your kid. And I see these parents pulling up in car line and they're driving their daughter to a computer coding class and then to travel team soccer and eating a sandwich

on the way from computer coding class to travel team soccer and the unintended message they're sending is that being amazing and having all these things on your resume is more important than a relaxed meal at home with family. And then they wonder why their daughter is so anxious. Don't do that. Cancel the computer coding class if it conflicts with supper. Prioritize supper time.

Got so much good evidence on this. Fight for supper at home. It is now becoming common for kids in the United States not to have an evening meal at home with their parents. Again, a generation ago, that was the default. Now it's not. You can make it the default. You've got to fight for time at home with your kids, and it's got to start with suppertime. No devices at the dinner table, no TV on during the dinner table. You can watch Megyn Kelly on YouTube after supper. But suppertime is the time to talk to your kids, to listen to your kids, to have time together around the dinner table. It's so important.

You can do it. It costs nothing. But it does require courage. The infiltration of social media tries to stop this. It's there to stop this. It's there to lure your child back to the device and away from you and away from all the things that are good for them. And now, so my kids now are 13, 11, almost 12 and nine. And the 13 year old's a boy. So he's not that into it. You know, I was telling the audience a couple of weeks ago, I checked his

screen time on his phone and it's and he's averaging seven minutes a day. So we're good. We're good. Now, my 11 year old is a girl and we're in a different scenario there. She doesn't have a phone, but she would love to spend more time on that iPad. And she would love for me to get her a phone tomorrow. And we haven't started the bad habits yet, but they're lurking. So I've heard you say this is one of your overall criticisms of parenting today and also specific on this issue. Be the parent. Your job is not to be liked.

Your job is to be the parent. And when it comes to this issue, you need to grow a pair and say, no, no, you will not have your phone in your room at night. And I don't care if you're upset. And there are all sorts of other limits as well. Take it from there. Yeah. So the phone in the bedroom, first of all, you're absolutely right. No child under 13 should have a smartphone and most 13 year olds are not ready for it. My daughter, who is wonderful, did not get her smartphone until her 15th birthday and no phones in the bedroom. At nine o'clock at night, the very latest, you take the device, you switch it off, and you put it in the charger, which stays in the parent's bedroom. She can have it back tomorrow morning. This has to be your call. And I've said

to parents, I've counseled parents, no phones in the bedroom. And the parent will say, oh, my daughter would totally freak out if I tried to take her phone from her. The parent is intimidated by their daughter who happened to be 12 years old in this case. You have to have the courage to do the right thing. No phones in the bedroom. We've got so much good research showing that the presence of a phone in the bedroom impairs the kid's sleep, even if it's turned off. And parents are amazed to find that half the ninth grade class is awake and texting at two in the morning. Emily and Jason just broke up. This is really big news. We'll have to talk about this. This has to be your call, the parent's call. It is not reasonable to put this burden in the lap of your 14-year-old daughter. What is she supposed

to say tomorrow in school when her friend says, hey, I texted you last night at midnight. How come you didn't answer? Is your 14-year-old supposed to say, well, researchers have found that sleep deprivation in adolescence is a major risk factor in the etiology of anxiety and depression. And hence, I turn my phone off each night. That's ridiculous. You can't expect her to talk like that. You have to allow her to say, hey, my evil parents take my phone every night at nine. Won't let it have back to the next morning. This has to be your call. So I say to parents of teenagers, you have to take the phone away from your kid. And I warned them, if that's not been the practice in your home, if you let your kid have the phone in the bedroom, they're going to be upset.

They're not going to applaud. They're going to be upset. They're going to say, well, I use it as my alarm clock. Let them know they still make actual alarm clocks. You can go to the store and buy one. And then your daughter may get really upset. She may say, well, what if there's an emergency? Remind her that you still have a phone in your bedroom.

If your friend has a true emergency, she's welcome to call you, and you will pick up at two in the morning, and you will decide that this emergency warrants waking your daughter up at two in the morning. It probably doesn't. It can probably wait. Parents have to do the right thing. And again, the concern I have is that so many American parents are now timid. Incidentally, the title of the book, the original title was The Collapse of American Parenting, and the subtitle was Why Most Kids Would Now Be Better Off Raised Outside North America. And I made that argument because I've spoken on this topic to parents in England, Scotland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Australia, New Zealand. Parents in those

countries don't let their kids have phones in the bedroom. But in this country, we do. American parents are less comfortable exercising authority than parents outside North America. Well, if you're not a celebrity, you don't get to choose your title or subtitle. But they did allow me to keep in the chapters. So there's a chapter in the collapse of parenting showing that American kids are now much more likely than kids in Europe or Australia or New Zealand to be anxious, depressed. An American kid is now 40 times more likely to be diagnosed with bipolar disorder compared to a kid in Germany. An American kid is 14 times more likely to be on medication for ADHD compared to a kid in the United Kingdom. An American kid is 93 times more likely to be on medications like Risperdal, Zyprexa, Seroquel compared to a kid in the United Kingdom. An American kid is 93 times more

likely to be on medications like Risperdal, Zyprexa, Seroquel compared to a kid in Italy. American parenting has become toxic because American parents have stepped back and they let kids decide that in many domains, like when to get a phone and whether to have a phone in your bedroom, you're really putting your kid at great risk. It's your job to be the parent to me. I mean, what, what's the point of parenting? What, why a four-year-old horse is a mature adult. The Kentucky Derby is raced with three-year-olds. A four-year-old human has barely begun and a horse is a bigger animal than a human. So, so, so what's the point of childhood? It can't just be about biological

maturation because a horse is fully mature at age four and a horse is a bigger animal than a human. Humans are children or adolescents for more years than most animals live. Why? Why? Why does development take so long in our species? Well, we don't have to guess. We've got scholars like Dr. Melvin Conner at Emory who's devoted his career to studying this question. We're at the 700-page tome titled The Evolution of Childhood, Comparing Development in Our Species with Development in Other Species.

Why is childhood so long? It's so long because it takes many years for human parents to teach the child what the child needs to know. That's your job, to teach the child. On the next page, I cite this Jennifer Finney Boylan, columnist for the New York Times, who said, enlightened parenting means, and I quote, setting your child free to discover for themselves their own right and wrong. And if in so doing, your child becomes a stranger to you, then so be it. That's enlightenment in the view of the New York Times, but it's not enlightened. It's a dereliction of duty. If you set your child free to discover

their own right and wrong, and they've got internet connection, what they'll discover is Cardi B, Drake, Bruno Mars, mainstream pornography, and transgenderism. It's an immensely toxic culture. So parents need to be in charge. They need to limit, govern, and transgenderism. It's an immensely toxic culture. So parents need to be in charge. They need to limit, govern, and guide what their kids are doing. Don't be afraid to be the bad guy. Your goal is not to have them like you at all times. I've heard you ask this.

I listened to a great podcast you did years ago. And the interviewer asked you, well, what about the response from kids, especially girls, but I'm sure it's boys too. I need social media. Otherwise I'm not going to be popular. I will not get invited to any of the parties. That is how it is communicated. Do you really want me sitting alone every Friday night, never invited to anything? I would, I have several answers when a kid says that, but the first answer I give to the parents is you don't want your kid to be the most popular kid. We now have good research showing that the most popular kid at age 13, age 14 is the most likely to be addicted to drugs or alcohol

six years down the road. That was not true a generation ago. It is true today because American popular culture is now toxic in a way that it was not toxic 30, 40 years ago. And we can talk about how the popular culture has changed. The parent-child relationship is more important than popularity with same age peers. And secondly, I would now point out, we've got all this powerful new research. Just last week, a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a longitudinal cohort study following kids from 12 to 15 years of age. So at 12 years of age, you do brain scans, high resolution MRI scans on the brain, and you assess how much is this kid on social media? Not at all, a little bit, a lot.

And then you follow these kids for three years. So the amygdala is this little nucleus at the base of the brain that is very primitive, and it's all about anger and fight or flight. As humans become mature, we suppress activity in the amygdala. We govern our emotions so that we're in charge of our emotions instead of our emotions being in charge of us. And it is normal in humans. We now got 20 years of good MRI scans showing this. As you progress through adolescence, you suppress activity in the amygdala. What these researchers reported last week, and this is a brand new finding, kids who are spending a lot of time on social media show the opposite. Instead of the amygdala becoming less active over time,

it's becoming more active over time. They're becoming less able to suppress their emotions, more impulsive. Social media is changing the wiring of the brain in the adolescent in a very harmful way. This is breaking news. It's the first such study to look at this in a longitudinal cohort study, which is really important. If you just do a cross-sectional study at one moment and you find that kids on social media have more activity in

the amygdala, well, it's hard to say which way the arrow of causality is pointing. Maybe kids who are more impulsive tend to be on social media more. But when you do a longitudinal study following kids across time, at age 12, these two kids, okay, we got Emily and Melissa at age 12, no difference in the amygdala activity, but Emily's spending a lot of time on social media and Melissa is not three years later.

Emily is showing all this uncontrolled activity in the amygdala, which Melissa is not showing that allows you to make a causal influence because you found her over time. That excessive time on social media is deranging the development of her brain. So again, we've got more evidence showing the parent needs to limit, govern, and guide. It is not reasonable, again, to expect this 12-year-old girl to say to her friends, okay, I'm going to cut back on social media because this study shows it might be harmful to me. No 12 year old is going to say that. It's the job of the parents. I thought about that because I have thought, is there a world in which I could allow my child to have a Snapchat account, let's say,

and it's on my phone. It's only on my phone. You want to see what's happening on Friday night? Sure. You can borrow my phone while I'm standing right here and give it back to me in 10 minutes. Like I, there might be a way of getting it. Maybe that's too uptight. Maybe other parents out there with teenagers are saying I'll never be able to pull that off, but just feel like there has to be some way for responsible incorporation of some of these social media accounts into your child's life because they're going to do it.

They're going to do it when they go to college. They're definitely going to do it when they go to college. My daughter is not on any social media. She is 16 years old, and she came along with me. I've had the great privilege of speaking at J. Sarah Catholic High School for each of the past six years to the parents of incoming freshmen. And this year I brought her with me. So when I said to the parents, my daughter, Sarah is 16 years old. She's not on any social media and she's doing just fine. She's got great friends. And if you don't believe her, if you don't believe me, here she is, you can talk to her. And Pat Reedy, who's vice president

of the school, interviewed Sarah for his podcast. If you don't believe me, you can just send me an email. I'll send you the link to the podcast, which is online. And she explained why she is on no social media. But let me tell you a little bit more about my personal story and Sarah's story. She was at a different school where all the kids were on social media. And she was the only one at 13, at 14, who did not have a phone. And she claimed it didn't bother her much, but you go to pick her up and all the other kids are looking at their devices and she's not. We changed schools. We found a different school, Delaware County Christian School, where none of the kids were on phones. Look, my wife and I thought we were infertile. You might wonder why an old guy has a 16-year-old daughter. It's because my wife and I're not able to have kids. And then after 15

years of marriage, we got our one and only, uh, Sarah. Um, and, but we were not happy with the schools were available in Western upper Montgomery County, Maryland. So we moved from, uh, from Montgomery County, Maryland to Chester County, Pennsylvania. If there's no school in your area, if all the schools in your area, all the kids are on devices, then you need to move. But I can tell you, having visited schools across the United States, if you live in an American city, you can find a school where kids are not on phones. I will say one advantage of having waited just even, you know, until our kids are 13 or 12 is they had a long time, sadly, because a lot of parents are getting their kids' phones at age eight now, of looking around and being unhappy with the fact that whether it's a dance

or some other social gathering, every kid is on his or her phone. And our kids are sitting there like, this is so lame. Why don't you dance? Why don't you shoot hoops? Why are you like, they've had some time to be a little disgusted by the phone obsession of other kids. So I mean, I certainly agree the longer you can put it off, the better. Let me pause you there, Dr. Sachs, we're going to squeeze in a break. And then I want to bring in some of our listeners who I'm sure have got some questions for you. A couple of quick hits, if you don't mind. I'd like to get your thoughts as a family doctor and a psychologist. I've heard you talk about this

before, but I think it's important for the viewers to know this preferred pronoun thing. They sit down in college, what's your pronoun? And I don't want my children to be asked that. And I certainly don't want them to be forced to give that. So what's, is there any risk? Is there any damage being done to our kids and being asked that question over and over? And how would you recommend people handle it? Yeah, I do think it's harmful because it is problematizing gender. It is making kids question what really should not be questioned. You know, we've learned so much over the last 20 years. The first edition of Why Gender Matters came out in 2005. And when I was writing that 20 years ago, I assumed, and I think most people writing on this topic assumed, that gender identity, whether you're male or female,

is more fundamental than sexual orientation. That turns out not to be the case. Bruce Jenner announced that he's actually a woman. Bruce is now Caitlin. His gender identity has changed from male to female, but his sexual orientation has not changed. He only wants to do it with women and he's not getting rid of his penis either. So it turns out that gender identity, whether you feel yourself to be male or female, is malleable. But sexual orientation is less malleable. That's a surprise. The preferred pronoun thing is harmful because it's implying that, hey, you can be anything you want to be. You can be a he or a she or a ze or a Zer, as Professor Bigler at UT Austin prefers.

And making this questionable is harmful. Again, I devote a good bit of space in the new edition of Why Gender Matters, showing that kids who do best are kids who, boys who are comfortable being boys, girls who are comfortable being girls. That doesn't mean stereotype. So what are they trying, what should they say? What do you think, I mean, like, what would you recommend they say when asked that? Well, as a parent, if you're at a school where they're saying preferred, what are your preferred pronouns? You need to leave that school. Or you need to reach out to the school with other concerned parents and explain why the school is mistaken.

It depends on the school. Some schools, I find the leadership is still open to reason. And I encourage parents when that's the case, band together with other schools. If your kid is young, try to interview. At the college level, hopefully your kid is ready to say, I'm not comfortable talking in those terms. Move on. My pronouns are figured out. Okay, quick questions. Abby, my faithful assistant, has been taking detailed notes with everything you say. She's writing it all down. She's got two young girls. not be allowing our kids to have sleepovers because you never know what the potential risks are in the other home. There could be a sexual assault happening. There could be a pedophile. You never know. She and I were both saying, we both had tons of sleepovers and don't necessarily see a problem with them. But what's your thought on it? I'm all in favor of sleepovers. Of course, as a parent, you need to do your due diligence. But I know my daughter's friend's parents, we've often had supper together.

And yeah, I think that's a good kind of experience for kids to have. I don't see any problem with sleepovers with families that you know. Let me get one in there from me, which is my daughter's coming into the age where she's arguing with me a lot, right? She's sort of getting an attitude. And you say like, you tell her to do something, she doesn't do it. You tell her again, she doesn't do it. You say, if you don't do it now, there's going to be a consequence. And then you get the, great, I look forward to that consequence. I love consequences. Bring it on.

You know, you get sort of the snark, which of course sends my blood boiling. And I'm like, so what am I supposed to do? I've had people say, don't engage. It's like, I have to make her do it. I don't know. What's the advice to parents like me dealing with that? Well, every family is different, but I do advise parents no question marks. That is, you don't say, do you think maybe it's time for us to leave the playground?

You say, hey, in 10 minutes, we're leaving the playground. In five minutes, we're leaving the playground. We're leaving the playground in two minutes. It's time to leave the playground. You may need to explain. Your daughter says, why can't I have a phone? And it's fine to explain, but you don't negotiate. You stand your ground. And it may happen that a child gets very upset with you. So let me give two examples very quickly. So for 18 years, I was an attending physician at Shady Grove Hospital in Rockville, Maryland. And one night I got a call from the ER, not to admit a patient or even to consult. A 15-year-old daughter, 15-year-old girl was a victim of sexual assault.

And mom was very upset and had asked that I come in to talk to her and make sure everything's okay. Daughters having a forensic exam because there's going to be charges filed. So I met mom in the consultation room just to get adjacent to the ER. And when I came in, mom's first words were, I knew I shouldn't have let her go. It was a frat party at the college. She's 15 years old. I knew I shouldn't have let her go. And you want to grab mom and shake her and say, well, then why'd you let her go? But I didn't do that, of course, because I already knew the answer. She wants to be her daughter's best friend and a friend is a peer. A friend cannot command. A friend cannot say no. So I shared that story at another school, Academy of the Holy Names in Tampa, Florida,

and mom came up to me afterwards and shared her story. Her 14-year-old daughter came up to her and said, hey, guess what? We're all going to Cancun for spring break. And mom looked at her phone. She's like, well, I can't get away that weekend. And I said, I didn't say you're going to Cancun. We're going to Cancun, me and all the girls. And mom said, you're 14 years old and you're going to Cancun, Mexico with a bunch of 14 year olds. I don't think it's safe. And her daughter said, it's totally fine. It'll be safe. We'll have our phones. We'll stay together. We'll be fine. And mom said, no, I'm sorry. You're not going. And she told me her daughter exploded and started screaming at her saying, I hate you. I hate you. You're going to

like totally ruin my whole life. And mom said, well, to be honest, sometimes I'm not so fond of you either, but I'm your mother. And that's a job. Like any job, it has a job description. And item one in my job description is I have to keep you safe. And I know more than you do about the behavior of drunk young men. And you're not going. If you're doing the right thing as a parent, there will be times that your child gets very angry at you and may say some very hurtful things. That's part of your job. That's part of your job. My mom used to say that. I had the, I hate you line on my mom one time. And my mom, who's great, said, Megan, you are my daughter and I will always love you. But I don't like you very much right now. Turn to walk. She's calm, cool as a cucumber. Good old Linda. Let me bring in Amy from California who's called in with a question for you. Hi, Amy. What's your question for Dr. Sachs? Okay, I'll try to keep it together. 10 years down the road, my child's 23. I had a lot

of stuff going on 10 years ago. I tried to be the best mom I could at that time, but now I'm the mom of one of those kids that's having a lot of these issues. What can you advise, give me advice for someone going through it after the fact? I can't rewind the clock. I don't get a do-over. How can I help now? Can you summarize a little bit the issues when you say all of these issues? Everything you talked about, everything I knew at the time, too much Instagram at the time for her. Overweight, depressed. Three years ago, she came to me and said she's gay. Her girlfriend now went through a bunch of anorexia stuff in high school, is now even thinking of affirming to being a male. And I support my child. I love my child. I will do anything for her. And

I just want to know, is there anything I can do now? 10 years after that, I can't go back into all those things you're talking about today because it was 10 years ago. That is my most feared question. I have a lot of strategies that I can share with confidence if the child is 10, 12, 14, 16 years of age. And I share them with confidence because I've seen them work. At age 23, or a young woman, I'm at a loss. I'm not the best person for you to ask.

I have very little to offer that I'm confident will be effective. I have to go back to say we need to do a thorough evaluation, talk about medication, but I have no special insight in that situation. Do you have any thoughts on where she can look, doc? Like, is there a resource? And my, my first instinct was church, you know, go prayer when all else fails. There are still good psychologists, psychiatrists out there. You need to vet them carefully. But in that situation, in my experience as a physician, medication is very likely going to be on the table and counseling is going to be necessary. So you need to find a good counselor who shares your perspective, who's in touch with

reality to help your daughter through a difficult time. Amy, thank you for taking that risk and sharing that with us. And God bless you. We will pray for your journey. Sorry that there's not a better answer. Let's try Teresa in Virginia Virginia who's got a thought or a question. Hi, Teresa. What's on your mind? Hi. I've really enjoyed the show today. I agree with so many things that you guys have said.

You know, whatever happened to parents being afraid to be parents? You know, I knew the kids my kids hung with. I didn't give them phones until they were 15 and had their learner's permit. I had spyware on their electronics. I knew what my kids were doing. And I didn't care if they liked me or not. And the thing that I think, I worked in a middle school for 15 years. And I can tell you that puberty and middle school are a toxic combination for these young kids who are already going through so much. And

all of this craziness that our society is accepting and planting in their brains is so frightening to me. But the one thing that I see more than anything, and you guys have touched on it, is the demise of the family unit. You know, like we don't... I got to cut you off there, Teresa, because we're up against a break there. And I want to give Dr. Sachs the last minute to comment on the family unit. Yeah. And I'll say it again, prioritize the family, cancel the play date, make a family date instead, cancel the computer coding class if it interferes with supper at home, fight for supper at home with your kids. The parent-child relationship is more important than your kids being popular with same-age peers. And Dr. Sachs has also said,

the family vacation is for the family. Don't bring friends along for your kids to be distracted with. They're supposed to be interacting with you. Oh, what a shock, right? There's all sorts of great advice in all these books. Dr. Sachs, it's a pleasure, pleasure to meet you. Please come back. There's so much more to go over. Thanks again. All the best. We've all been thinking about Amy. Amy, we have resolved here that we're going to find an expert who can give you advice

when you have the 23-year-old who's struggling. We're on it for you. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk tomorrow. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.