The Latecomers is first and foremost a novel about family. From the time she marries Salo Oppenheimer, Johanna is deeply invested in creating a family: “It meant everything to Johanna that her children be powerfully attached to one another, even more attached than some random sequential assemblage of ‘normal’ siblings might have been” (58). For most of the story, Johanna struggles to make her fantasy family by denying the reality of the individuals and relationships involved. Only when she is able to relinquish her ideals, and accept her children for themselves, is she truly able to have a family.

From the moment Johanna marries Salo, she begins moving toward her goal of creating a family. Getting pregnant is difficult, which only raises the stakes, and invests her more deeply in the idea of having a close, intimate family after the triplets are born. However, from the moment of their birth, “not one of the three […] had a speck of affection for either of the others […] let alone as counterparts in a tender and eternal family relationship” (1). Still, Johanna continually tries to bring the children forcibly together with traditions like the annual photographs, hung “along the staircase wall in Brooklyn so they could see themselves grow up together every time they went upstairs” (60).