Being an Empty Nester Isn’t for the Birds

In May 2025, my youngest (adult) child graduated from college. After living with us for the summer, she moved into her first apartment in September. Our older daughter went to school in Washington, D.C., and has been living down there for the three years since she graduated. My spouse and I are now officially empty nesters! Although apparently, some people are now calling this situation “free bird” instead of “empty nest” https://www.shelovpsychologygroup.com/blog/free-bird. This newer term is intended to emphasize the positive aspects of having more freedom, and to avoid some of the negative associations with being an empty nester.

Our younger daughter lives about twenty minutes away from us, and one of her jobs is in our town, so she has been stopping by our house regularly. Honestly, right now we see her more often than we did when she was in school! But it is probably just a matter of time before she moves further away and my husband and I will see her less. Of course, technology these days has made keeping in touch so much easier than when I was in my twenties and it still cost more to call my parents long distance than making a local phone call! We now text and call my daughters often and usually video chat about once a week.

I have been thinking about how both my relationship with my husband and my daughters is changing. After more than twenty years of focusing primarily on raising and parenting our children, my husband and I now have more time for each other. Of course, we are in some ways different people than before we had children, and our relationship has evolved over the years. And, now that my daughters are grown, I have to transition from parenting children to building a relationship with them as adults. I recently attended a workshop on grief, and it was pointed out that we grieve not only when a loved one passes on, but also when we experience life changes such as our children leaving the “nest.” It takes time and being gentle with ourselves to navigate these transitions.

These life changes are ones that many people have gone through. Fortunately, the Mercer County Library System has materials that can help us adjust to becoming an empty nester, or free bird, and learn how to best relate to our adult children. Here is a selection:

Part memoir, part self-help guide, Melissa Shultz’s From Mom to Me Again: How I Survived My First Empty-Nest Year and Reinvented the Rest of My Life details her struggles with the empty nest and how she transformed her marriage, friendships, career, and finally herself.

In My Nest Isn't Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space: The Amazing Adventures of an Ordinary Woman, Lisa Scottoline writes “[t]he bottom line is, being an empty nester isn’t the worst thing in the world. Let me tell you why.” And, she goes on to provide her explanation. This is a hilarious collection of essays that Lisa wrote with her adult daughter, Francesca, based on their weekly “Chick Wit” column for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Writing together is certainly one way to bond with your adult child!

Chicken Soup for the Soul: Empty Nesters: 101 Stories about Surviving and Thriving When the Kids Leave Home by Jack Canfield is a collection of stories for parents about becoming an empty nester - the newfound freedom, missing the kids, living through the kids' visits home, finding new uses for old rooms. It also contains stories from kids who have flown the nest and stories from the siblings left behind.

Some books about building a good relationship with your adult children are:

Your New Life with Adult Children: A Practical Guide to What Helps, What Hurts, and What Heals by Gary D. Chapman and Ross Campbell. In this book, Dr. Gary Chapman, author of The 5 Love Languages, works with a clinical psychiatrist to show how you can adapt your parenting style to navigate your relationship with your adult child.

Parenting Adult Children: A Practical Guide to Navigating Your Evolving Relationship by Kate McNulty. Even though your role as a parent changes when your child is grown, that doesn’t necessarily mean it gets any easier. Whether you’re facing challenges in your relationship with your adult child or you’ve simply grown apart, this book can help you build the skills necessary to overcome hurdles and create a stronger bond.

Doing Life With Your Adult Children: Keep Your Mouth Shut and the Welcome Mat Out by Jim Burns. Dealing with boundaries, finances, and changing values are all part of parenting your grown child. Author Jim Burns offers practical advice and hopeful encouragement for one of the richest and most challenging seasons of parenting.

How to Really Love Your Adult Child: Building a Healthy Relationship in a Changing World by Ross Campbell and Gary D. Chapman. This book provides guidance for parents of adult children in the early twenty-first century, discussing the importance of setting guidelines for the "un-empty nest, " giving insight on the roles of grandparents and in-laws, describing alternative choices in lifestyles and values, and offering suggestions on how to help a struggling child.

The Other Talk: A Guide to Talking with Your Adult Children about the Rest of Your Life by Timothy Prosch gives you the tools to develop a strong partnership with your kids to plan for the rest of your life. The book addresses questions such as: Who will manage your finances and how will you budget for unknown needs? Where can your children find important documents they will need to help? Where will you live if you need assistance?

If your adult child either doesn’t move out, or ends up moving back in with you, The Accordion Family: Boomerang Kids, Anxious Parents, and the Private Toll of Global Competition by Katherine S. Newman provides insight on “boomerang kids” in families around the world, and explains why the high cost of living is making it increasingly difficult for children to move out of their parents’ house.

 

 

 

Some fiction books that feature characters who are empty nesters are:

Cruel Summer by Maisey Yates. Samantha Parker has the perfect life...but on the brink of their long-awaited empty-nest chapter, Will asks Samantha for something she never dreamed of: an open marriage.

Mrs. Fletcher by Tom Perrotta. Eve is struggling to adjust to her empty nest when one night her phone lights up with a text message. Sent from an anonymous number, the mysterious sender tells Eve, "U R my MILF!"

Musical Chairs: A Novel by Amy Poeppel. Bridget and Will have the kind of relationship that people envy: they're loving, compatible, and completely devoted to each other. The fact that they're strictly friends seems to get lost on nearly everyone; after all, they're as good as married in (almost) every way. Bridget has been dreaming of spending the summer at her rustic Connecticut country home with her boyfriend, Sterling. But her plans are suddenly upended when he breaks up with her over email, and then her twin twenty-something children arrive unannounced, filling her empty nest with their big dogs, dirty laundry, and respective crises.

I expect that I will be adjusting to this new phase of my life for a while, and that it will have downs and ups just like other times have. I’m looking forward to building relationships with my adult daughters that will hopefully grow and change as they do, and to finding more time for myself and my relationship with my spouse. If you have recently become an empty nester (or “free bird”), how has this new time in your life impacted you? What do you miss from your “old life” and what do you enjoy now that you didn’t have before?

Sharon S.

Ewing Branch