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Savin-Williams, R. C. (2001). Mom, Dad, I'm Gav: How Families Negotiate Coming Out. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. 276 pp. ISBN: 1-55798741-6. Price: $39.95 (hardcover).
Savin-Williams wrote this book to debunk popular notions of coming out that emphasize crisis and grief. These notions include the belief that gay and lesbian youth follow set stages in their coming out process, that parents react with horror and even violence upon discovering their child's sexual orientation, and that parents must undergo a grieving process in order to learn acceptance. On the contrary, he presents quantitative, narrative, and clinical evidence to show that there exist diverse processes by which sexual minority youth disclose their identities, and that, if disclosure poses problems with parents, these problems can be and often are resolved.
Mom, Dad, I'm Gay is divided into nine chapters and an appendix on research methods. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the book that sets an agenda to demonstrate diversity and resilience in gay and lesbian youth. The second chapter provides definitions and also a discussion of the author's "differential developmental trajectories" framework of identity development. This framework posits that gay and lesbian youth are similar to all youth but also have uniqueness because of their...