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Coming Out, Coming Home: Helping Families Adjust to a Gay or Lesbian Child resources

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Preface  xv end. As a gay man and a family therapist, I have long suspected that this story was way too simple and far from complete. So I undertook this study of sixty-five gay and lesbian youth and their parents to see if I could get a fuller picture, one that included the perspectives of parents and children in the same family. However, as I interviewed the young people and their parents, I found what I had long suspected in my clinical work, that there was afamily adjust- ment process. Parental reaction and adjustment to the news that a child is gay or lesbian did not occur in isolation. The children’s personal characteristics and the relationships they maintained with their families played a signifi- cant role in parental recovery. Furthermore, the interviews seemed to suggest that family adjustment occurred in stages or phases—revealing a process not fully encompassed by grief-recovery models suggested in the earlier literature (Mattison and McWhirter 1995; Robinson et al. 1982). These stages were not necessarily temporal but were instead typified by reciprocal parent-child interaction patterns unique to each phase of the family adjustment trajectory. These interaction patterns provided insight into family struggles and suggest guidelines that can assist therapists in working with these clients. In addition, previous models of gay self-acceptance and coming out describe a mostlyindividualprocess during which a lesbian or gay male tra- verses a path from confusion and distress to eventual self-acceptance (Cass 1979; Coleman 1982; Troiden 1989). However, what the interviews in this book uncover is the potentially powerful role of the family in gay and lesbian self-acceptance, which further underscores the importance of considering the family in working with lesbian and gay youth. This book is not meant to contradict or replace the findings of the excel- lent research, clinical guides, and articles already available, some already men- tioned and others cited in the body of this book. Instead, I hope readers integrate the information herein with that of my fellow colleagues, adding their own clinical wisdom to the mix so as to provide the most sensitive and effective treatment possible. In the spirit of grounded theory, this work was inductive in nature. The themes and patterns that emerged from the interviews were compared, con- trasted, and, when relevant, integrated with existing literature. However, in putting together my ideas, if the findings could be considered bricks, clinical wisdom was the mortar. No one study answers all the questions in a particu- lar area and most raise additional questions. Thus I drew from my twenty-five years of practice experience to make cohesive sense of the results, fill holes in 01_lasala14382_fm.indd 15 3/10/10 12:50:44 PM

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