This book is based on a collaborative study by four Chilean researchers completed over a two-year period in two public high schools in Santiago. The schools serve low-income urban adolescents. Gender is the basis of group formation for these adolescents. For boys, group identification is very important. Graffiti as well as scratching metal and wood surfaces are seen as age-appropriate cultural manifestations of this identity.
Girls consider school-age boys too immature to date but fine to dance with.
Girls are successful in using language to stop certain boys behaviors that annoy them. Girls and boys are heavy users of tobacco in and out the school. Girls who become pregnant are not allowed to wear the school uniform. When pregnancies become too obvious, as illustrated in the case concerning a female principal, girls are screamed at and expelled from school. This has changed since the time the book was published, and starting around July 2000 pregnant girls cannot be expelled from public schools.