In Chapter 6, we explore how the participants came to understand themselves as parents, and what this meant for the development of a parental identity. Specifically, we explore the difference between becoming a parent to a child and feeling like a parent, suggesting that the first does not automatically lead to the second. To explore this topic, we differentiate between people’s views during the pregnancy and their views after the birth of their first child. In terms of unborn children, some people viewed an unborn child as an abstract concept and hard to conceptualise as a child. Other people already saw their unborn child as part of their family. After the birth of their child, some people struggled to develop a sense of a parental identity, while other people had a very clear sense of themselves as parents.