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18 February 2025

By Jon Swain

Within the field of education research there is a rich tradition of qualitative research that seeks to give voice to and understand the lives of children, to which my book, Negotiating Gendered Identities in Primary School: Children’s lives with their peers, is a recent addition. Published in open access, it focuses on how 10-11-year-old girls and boys experience life in their informal peer group. Based on research I carried out in two co-educational primary schools, one state and one independent, it explores the dynamics of friendships and social hierarchies, identities and how time is spent outside of lessons, including the use of social media. It interrogates how children make meanings: who they think they are, what it means to be a girl or a boy, and what forms of femininity and masculinity are most dominant.

One of the issues the book explores is an aspect of peer relations in school that other researchers have termed ‘cultures of sexuality’. A notable finding from my own research was its contrary findings to prior studies on this matter. While many of those, such as Renold (2013) and Huuki et al (2022), have cited a prevalent culture of sexuality among pre-teens in school, I found this to be comparatively limited in the settings in which I conducted my empirical study.

There is no agreed definition in the literature about what constitutes a ‘culture of sexuality’ in a school setting. There are, though, commonly used indicators, such as the presence of girlfriend/boyfriend relations and crushes between peers, and how much pupils notice and discuss one another’s ‘looks’. Using these measures, although traces of ostensible sexuality were evident among the pupils in my two schools, and, for some children, ‘heterosexual desires’ with peers were an everyday component of school life, this was generally confined to relatively small numbers.

Gendered friendship groups

Girls and boys got on well with each other, and relations appeared to be relaxed and easy. Although many friendship groups contained girls and boys, and a significant number of children joined in with the activities of different gendered friendship groups at breaktimes, most were disinterested in pupils from a differently categorised gender (resonating with my own previous empirical research), and there was an absence of any (or little) ‘romantic’ attraction. Most regarded them just as another ‘friend’. Although some noticed if pupils were ‘physically attractive’, most liked them because they were ‘kind’, were ‘fun’, shared the same sense of humour and/or had a ‘good’ (charismatic) personality.

Boyfriends and girlfriends

As regards the specific indicator of girlfriend/boyfriend relations, some of the aforementioned studies have found that, for this upper primary age group, ‘having a girlfriend or boyfriend’ – often referred to as ‘going-out’ – is a common occurrence amongst peer group culture in primary schools. Again, by contrast, in my study there were very few (at least) visible girlfriend-boyfriend relationships that the pupils were able to identify: less than six out of the 94 pupils I interviewed. Most studies note that such ‘couples’ rarely meet or ‘go’ anywhere outside school, and that these relationships are generally more symbolic. As one girl told me:

Some people in our year … call themselves girlfriend and boyfriend but you don’t really go on dates.

Crushes

Many more boys and girls in my study were prepared to admit that they had, or had had, a crush on one of their peer group. Nonetheless, certainly based on the pupils’ self-reports, the number of crushes between them was again relatively low: at the prep school around a quarter of the year group reported currently having a crush and a tenth of the year group at the state school. The pupils did, though, more commonly report having had crushes earlier on in primary school, as reflected in studies such as that by Blaise (2005).

Crushes can be defined as being romantically ‘fancied’ and ‘fancying’ others. The main difference between a crush and having a girlfriend or boyfriend in my two schools was that crushes were more frivolous in nature and ephemeral, with many lasting only days or weeks. As one girl told me:

Sometimes, when I like a person and they like me back, I then, after the day, I don’t really like them very much… and then I’ll like them again.

Crushes are about children beginning to recognise and understand bodies as being gendered through affective relationships. They can teach children important social and interpersonal skills, helping them to develop skills of communication and compromise, which they will cultivate further in adolescence and young adulthood. However, although young children can have fun and gain pleasure from their crushes, these affiliations can also be precarious and bring pressure and pain, especially when they are not reciprocated. They can therefore cause confusion, uncertainty, and anxiety.

Evolving research base

It is of course vital to recognise the scope of any research study, in this case a study based on research in just two middle-class schools. But the depth of insight that research in this qualitative tradition offers is considerable, providing windows into the social worlds of, in this instance, schools and their pupil peer groups. Taken together, contrasting methodologies and findings add further richness.

In many respects the findings in the book present a good news story and, in a way, are an affirmation of the impact of feminism and gender policy over the last half century. Things are better (more equalitarian and inclusive) than 25 years ago. Although I am not suggesting the pupils I spoke with were never spiteful to each other, there was also very little evidence of the homophobia or misogyny in these two schools that Renold (2004) and I (Swain, 2003) found in earlier research in other settings.