Period of adjustment

‘Empty-nesters’ look to tears — and travel

PPittsburgh Post-Gazette atti Corder says she didn’t cope well when her twin daughters went off to college seven years ago.

“I cried every day until they came home at Thanksgiving,” she recalled. She and her husband, Lloyd, expect to do much better this time when their younger daughter, Maura, heads to the University of Kansas.

Mr. Corder and his father were Kansas graduates, and Maura will represent a third generation in his family to become a Jayhawk. Their daughter will be in the Kansas marching band, and Mr. and Mrs. Corder plan to fly to Lawrence, Kan., for several home football games this fall.

The Corders, of Ben Avon, will join millions of parents who will become “empty-nesters” this month as an only or youngest child heads off to college.

Those students will join what the U.S. Department of Education says is some 20.4 million students expected to attend America’s 5,300 colleges and universities this fall.

Natalie Caine says tears — shed by both fathers and mothers — are not unusual during such transition times. Ms. Caine leads workshops and counsels couples and individuals as they face a variety of life changes.

She is a native of Wheeling, W.Va., who now bases her practice in the Toluca Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. For the past 15 years, her areas of specialty have included “empty nest” support services.

Ms. Caine has had personal experience with this particular life change. Her only child, a daughter, selected a college in New YorkCity, 3,000 miles from California.

In a recent phone conversation, Mrs. Caine emphasized that each family situation is unique. Do not measure yourself and your “empty nest” reaction to those of your neighbors, she advised. Each family and each parent within that family likely will deal differently with the transition — which she compared to a grieving process.

She did offer some general warnings. Do not start to obsess about having missed too many volleyball games or school plays, she said. Such thinking can cascade into a torrent of regrets.