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Coping with an Empty Nest
When Your Youngest Leaves Home
By Felicia Hodges
An unfamiliar sadness engulfed Erica Carr of New York as she and her husband were dropping off their son, Nate, at college in Boston.
"It kind of hit me when we were walking out of the room and as we drove away from the city," she says. "It felt like such a severe loss."
Ellen Gamberg, homemaker and mother of 23-year-old Lea, was happy when her only child announced that she was getting married. For close to a year, mother and daughter handled most of the wedding details together, picking out flowers and bridesmaid dresses.
But when the big day arrived, Gamberg felt sad and lonely. "I guess it finally hit me that she would be leaving home for good to start a life with [her fianc蛬" she says. "Of course I was happy for her but I was really blue for me. She lived at home when she went to college and I guess I realized that the longest she'd ever been away from home before was two weeks of summer camp when she was in grade school."
According to family psychologist Dr. Marlon Fleischer, the feelings that Gamberg and Carr experienced are common for parents once their children leave home to live somewhere else. "Parents dedicate so much of their day-to-day existence to their children to try and help them grow to be responsible adults," Dr. Fleischer says. "Once those children leave home for good, it often triggers feelings of loss because what had been their primary job for so long is now over. Their children have become adults."