empty nest

plural empty nests

1. A home or a family where the children have grown up and moved away.

   Yet an “empty nest” can cause confusing emotions for parents. While this juncture can bring on sadness and loneliness, it can also signal newfound freedom and fulfillment.

   2014, Lisa O. Engelhardt, Empty Nest Therapy, Open Road Media, →ISBN

   2 more examples

   One woman with a full-on and demanding career e-mailed me to say ‘This empty nest thing is no joke. I didn't realise it would hit me so hard. It is day three of my daughter being gone and I have to resist the urge to weep every time I go past her room.’

   2011, Celia Dodd, The Empty Nest: Your Changing Family, Your New Direction, Hachette UK, →ISBN

   As Dodd wrote in ‘The Empty Nest,’ “To me, it was glaringly obvious that parting from a child who has been the centre of your life for twenty-odd years is a really big deal. Yet while new parents are bombarded with advice, empty nest parents are left to muddle through what is arguably the most challenging phase of parenting.”

   2025 August 10, Don Riddell, “Now that my kids are off to college, what’s this empty nester dad to do?”, in CNN

2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see empty, nest.