Children may both create and challenge gender structures and meanings. However, for much of the time for a majority of the girls and boys in 3R, gender either operates as opposition or hierarchy or most commonly both at the same time. As Janet Holland and her colleagues found in relation to the adolescents in their study, the girls just as much as the boys in this class were ‘drawn into making masculinity powerful’ (Holland et al., 1998, p. 30).The contemporary orthodoxy that girls are doing better than boys masks the complex messiness of gender relations in which, despite girls’ better educational attainment, within this peer group, the prevalent view is still that it’s better being a boy.