This cutting-edge collection of articles examines the sociocultural context of the lives of lesbians and lesbian families and reveals how new insights about lesbian identities, experiences, and relationships can be integrated into clinical theory and practice. A family therapist, Joan Laird presents several clinical approaches to working with lesbians as individuals and in couple and parenting relationships and to viewing sexual orientation in its full complexity of race, class, gender, and cultural identity. Rich with clinical case studies and research on the everyday lives of lesbian families, this book includes chapters on the strategic language of self-disclosure, the family lives of lesbian mothers, and lesbian mothers who "come out" to their adolescent children.