The author examines the ways in which a psychoanalytic perspective may illuminate the underlying developmental dynamics of children of lesbian parents. Families headed by gay and lesbian parents demand reconsideration of a theory of oedipal development based on heterosexual parents. If triangulation, the move from dyadic to triadic object relationships, depends on 2 primary processes—the child's acceptance of the immutability of generations and the child's recognition that children are excluded from the world of adult sexuality—parental gender or sexual orientation assumes less importance. The emergence of conscience from multifaceted processes of identification is consistent with this view of triangulation as a developmental phase. Children of gay and lesbian parents must be offered theories of healthy development that include them.