A large focus of my practice is helping individuals, couples and families understand what works best for them and how to navigate identities and ways of being that have not traditionally been understood or accepted. These are often in the form of diverse sexual orientations (lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, asexual), less conventional relationship orientations (polyamory and consensual non-monogamies) and varied gender identities (transgender, non-binary). However, family structures that differ from "two (first-time) married, heterosexual parents" are often a lot more common than we may assume and hence many of us are currently finding our way in "non-traditional" families or being challenged to re-conceptualise what we consider to be family.
The audiobook, New Family Values, by psychologist and writer Andrew Solomon has really helped me to continue to rethink my notions of family. The book has many useful narratives and ideas about different forms of family - same sex parents, single parents, surrogacy, adoption, foster care, multi-parent families, polyamorous families, childless families and child-free families to name a few - and how the law and societal views may lag behind in accommodating this diversity.