Thriving with an empty nest
After years of taking care of their children’s everyday needs, waving them off to college can leave parents bereft. Tanya Sweeney hears why leaving home is hard on everyone — but there can be a silver lining
With the start of a new college year comes a pivotal moment that most Irish parents dread and fear in equal measure. Whether dispatching them to a new life in college or the workplace, sending kids off into the big bad world is a massive life milestone.
And by all rights, it should feel like a parental lap of honour. After 18 years of sleep schedules, school runs and Christmases, the thoughts of an end-goal has kept many a frazzled parent going.
Yet why, when this ‘me time’ is so often well deserved, does the empty nest stage of life pose so many psychological pitfalls?
As a mum of five children, Ocean FM presenter Claire Ronan has long been used to a chaotic and boisterous household.
“The house was always really, really chaotic,” she recalls. “It was great having them so close in age together as they played together and grew up together, but then left together.”
Sure enough, the time soon came for her and husband Conor to wave off their children. Barry (26), Ali (25), Freya (24) and Suvi (22) all thrived in university in Dublin, and the time soon came for the baby of the family, Mikaela (19), to follow suit and take her place in DCU.
“The place went from 100 to zero overnight,” smiles Claire. “Every time I thought about it, I got a sick feeling in my stomach for about a year. Mikaela was my little pal. When she was studying, I’d wait until she was done, then we’d have a cup of tea and watch Netflix. I was really worried about the routine of my life when she left. For years, we’d done school at 8.10, and dinner at six.”
The day Claire drove Mikaela to her new life, where she would live with her three sisters, was a highly emotional one.
“I knew it would be fine as she was living with her sisters, and that made life much easier. We stayed in that Saturday night, ordered a Chinese and got her sorted. In a lucky way, I had to get up and appear on TV3 for a newspaper review the following morning, so that was sort of a distraction. It was just a question of saying goodbye, taking a big deep breath and walking out the door. Mikaela was a bit nervous in that moment as well, but I knew I’d only be indulging her if I showed my emotions.”
All that was left for Claire to do was to go home and enjoy the peace.
“Now that it’s happened, life is no longer about rushing home to have dinner on the table at six,” she notes. “I remember saying to my husband the first week, ‘shall we go to the pictures?’. Before, I wanted to be home when Mikaela was studying as she would be my first priority. I’m also planning a trip away with my girlfriends in December, and this time it’s a little different, not having to check where the baby — we still call her the baby — would be.
“You have a lot more time with your husband, which in my case has been a great thing,” she adds. “We have these great big long chats now. We haven’t killed each other yet!”
Yet according to the experts, the last child leaving home can often be a prime danger spot for many marriages. By the time the grind of looking after children winds down, many couples realise that their relationship isn’t what it used to be. “How a person reacts to ‘empty nest’ syndrome really does depend on what’s been going on in your life beforehand,” observes psychologist Allison Keating, author of The Secret Life Of Adults.
“You can just get absorbed in kids’ lives and activities, and have little space in the day. People don’t mean for their relationships to get sidetracked, but some people do need to try and maintain their status as a couple on an emotional, sexual and social level.
“If, for instance, a husband comes home and says, ‘I want to change this or that’, it can just open a whole can of worms. Fights start happening that feel silly but what it means is that you’ve lost that connection with the other person.”
Yet while many relationships feel the strain, the personal pitfalls of coming home to a ‘deafening silence’ can also land a personal blow for mothers and fathers.
“There’s a real sense of anti-climax there,” notes Keating. “For a lot of people, it’s about having to think about how to fill their time on a personal level. The common theme that I see coming through in my practice is that people might feel a little loss in their identity as a mother or father — something we’ll see more and more of in an increasingly ageing population,” she adds.
She’s not wrong. According to statistics by the Economic and Social Research Institute, around a fifth of those aged between 50 and 59 were living alone, while 63pc of over 80s lived on their own. Of course, an increasing number of parents find that their nest doesn’t quite empty even as their offspring reach adulthood. In Ireland, according to CSO data, the number of 18 to 39-year-olds living with their parents stood at 413,727 in 2016, up almost 14,000 on 2011 figures.
“We do really need to shake up our attitudes around age. In Mediterranean countries, for instance, you see the importance of grandparents, but we’re a little behind the curve, and you see a lot of people really limiting themselves, thinking, ‘oh, I can’t do that at my age’.”
Not so in Claire’s case: six years ago, she returned to college and did a radio course.
“I started working in radio specifically to prepare for this,” she says. “I indulge myself with my great job at Ocean FM, and it really is my saviour. If I didn’t have work, I’d have been lost. I just knew I would miss them so much if I didn’t do something, and I wanted to find my own life. I did what I could to protect myself from what was going to happen.
“The one piece of advice my mother gave me was, ‘get out of the house — if you stay at home, you get very closed off’.”
Keating agrees: “The big question now is, what do I want? What type of things do I want to do to fill my time on a personal level? It’s a great opportunity to move into challenging times as an adult. It doesn’t need to be sky-diving — try joining a book club or a photography group.”
These days, Claire is still very much a parent to her children, but her relationship with them has shifted on to a more personally equal level.
“I went away with my four girls for my birthday and I was sitting at a table with them and, bar my two sisters, I thought, ‘these girls are the absolute best company’,” she smiles. “I wouldn’t want to have been anywhere else.”
The advice my mother gave me was, ‘get out of the house — if you stay at home, you get closed off ’