Rural stayers are often defined as people who have never left their rural home region or village.However, rural regions and villages also receive new inhabitants. This paper explores if and how newcomers become inhabitants who stay put. We do so by interviewing couples of newcomers who moved to a rural area of the Netherlands at the family formation life stage. All had moved between 5 and 10 years prior to this study. We view the process of becoming a stayer through the lens of getting attached to and identifying with the new home region. We adopt the concepts of 'elective belonging' and 'selective belonging' to explore the newcomers' actual experiences of rural place and, in turn, the ways rural newcomer families become stayers. We identify two types of stayers: children-led and convinced stayers. Both envisage a re-negotiation of staying or leaving at a later life stage (either the empty nest or old age stage). They all elected to belong to residential places in enchanted rural landscapes. But they also are selective in developing belonging to the rural. First, especially convinced stayers consciously adapt their behaviour in order to fit in the local community. Second, children-led stayers seek only to become involved in child-related activities. Third, both types of stayers 'identify against' certain elements of local culture and of real rural stayers. S/elective strategies of belonging are found to go hand-in-hand with processes of becoming a stayer. Moreover, s/elective belonging to the place leaves the option to 'leave in future'. motivates stayers to stay we know that attachment to and rootedness in the rural home area play a significant role (Barcus & Brunn, 2009;Haukanes, 2013). The presence of social networks of family and friends, and familiarity with both the rural community and the physical landscape contribute to the process of staying. However, rural regions and villages also receive new inhabitants. Although it is increasingly acknowledged that rural in-migration is more 'messy' and diverse than previously thought Bijker, Haartsen, & Strijker, 2012, 2013Stockdale, 2015), the predominant idea is that rural newcomers are middle class people attracted by positive representations of the rural living environment, the so-called rural idyll (Benson & O'Reilly, 2009;Halfacree, 1994). In their conceptual paper 'Moving to the countryside … and staying: lives beyond representations', Halfacree and Rivera (2012) note that there is often a mismatch between these rural representations and rural reality, which amplifies the question, why do newcomers stay? They call for more empirical research into 'why and how pro-rural migrants subsequently stay in their [rural] destinations ' (Halfacree & Rivera, 2012: 92). In this paper, we respond to this call. We do so by focusing on the experiences of rural place by newcomers who moved to a rural area of the Netherlands at the family formation life stage. All had moved between 5 and 10 years prior to this study being conducted.In contrast to Halfacree & Rivera'...