Empty nest syndrome is a general feeling of grief and loneliness parents or guardians may feel when their children leave home to live on their own for the first time. Since a young adult moving out their parents' house is seen as a normal and healthy event, the symptoms of empty nest syndrome often go unrecognized ("Empty Nest Syndrome," 2010). For parents, this can result in depression, as well as a loss of purpose. When their children finally “leave the nest”, parents must begin to adjust their lives accordingly.
Read more about Empty Nest Syndrome: Symptoms, Effects and Challenges, Coping, Myth Versus Reality, Not-so-empty Nest
Famous quotes containing the words empty, nest and/or syndrome:
“History counts its skeletons in round numbers.
A thousand and one remains a thousand,
as though the one had never existed:
an imaginary embryo, an empty cradle,
...
emptiness running down steps toward the garden,
nobody’s place in line.”
—Wislawa Szymborska (b. 1923)
“He builds a big town with his mouth, but not even a fly’s nest with his hands.”
—Estonian. Trans. by Ilse Lehiste (1993)
“Women are taught that their main goal in life is to serve others—first men, and later, children. This prescription leads to enormous problems, for it is supposed to be carried out as if women did not have needs of their own, as if one could serve others without simultaneously attending to one’s own interests and desires. Carried to its “perfection,” it produces the martyr syndrome or the smothering wife and mother.”
—Jean Baker Miller (20th century)