Baby’s first family: Unmarried mothers’ conceptions of their newborns’ family members

We investigate Finnish unmarried mothers’ (n = 195) subjective understanding of their newborns’ families. In contrast to studies focusing on the mother's household or union status, we asked the mothers who they felt to belong to their baby's family. Latent class analysis detected four family types, varying in their inclusion of baby's father, siblings, wider kin group and parents’ friends. Most of the mothers subsumed extra‐household relationships in their baby's family, although one in four mothers limited the family to their household members. The results indicate notable differences in the newborns’ relational contexts, which may turn into differences in children's social resources.