Flying The Nest

For a parent whose child has grown up and recently left home, feelings of unexpected pain and even grieving can arise. Here's how to deal with empty nest syndrome

- Susannah Hickling

EMPTY NEST SYNDROME hit me unexpectedly in Tesco and it hit me like a freight train. All the chicken breast fillets were packaged for two people and there was only one of us at home now. I spent the rest of that food shop choking back tears.

I was shocked at my reaction. My 18-year-old son was loving his first term at uni and I was thrilled for him. I’d always found parenting a bit of a chore and had always worked, so it wasn’t as if I was defined by motherhood. What was going on?

It seems that feelings of sadness when a child leaves home are common among parents. The COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t helped. With lockdowns throwing families together 24/7, we got very used to having our children around. A study of 1,000 parents from student accommodation provider Unite Students found that 98 per cent of mums and dads who were dropping off their offspring at university for the first time in 2021 experienced extreme grief, with 93 per cent believing the pandemic had aggravated it.

Yet you can’t get a diagnosis of empty nest syndrome. It doesn’t exist as a mental health condition and some academics have pooh-poohed it. A 2015 University of Arizona study of 2,200 mostly well-educated mothers found they were actually more unhappy when their children were at middle school and concluded, “‘empty nest’ syndrome is largely a myth”. Other researchers have found children leaving home has a positive effect on parents’ well-being. But research remains limited, perhaps reflecting experts’ lack of interest in the subject.