Social class experiences tend to have a signi¶cant in¸uence on family dynamics, as family structure, roles, rules, and expectations o½en vary across social class status. Generations shape family narratives about class, a·ecting how family members de¶ne themselves, their shared values, and the manner in which they approach the challenges of daily life (Kliman, 1998). »ese narratives create an intergenerational process of de¶ning what is acceptable and expected within the family, whether it be education, vocation, or future decisions about family. »e traditional view of social class in the helping professions strati¶es people into social class groups and then infers that people within a particular group will see and react to the world similarly. »is tendency is referred to as the strati¶cation paradigm (Liu, 2002) and can lead helping professionals to make assumptions based on class, such as the familiar assumption that lower class families have higher degrees of disorganization and dysfunction. However, many family issues that arise in family counseling are quite similar across clientele of various social standings. It is the coping mechanisms and resources that are available to these families that di·er. Helping professionals who work closely with family systems are tasked to look beyond the traditional strati¶cation paradigms to the speci¶c experiences of families, and then work closely with families to bring about change that is meaningful and appropriate for them.