HappiNest Finding Fulfillment When Your Kids Leave Home

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comes, find it may not be as easy to deal with as they thought.” —
Elizabeth Lombardo, PhD, best-selling author of Better Than Perfect: 7
Strategies to Crush Your Inner Critic and Create a Life You Love

“Very few people in the past felt either the luxury or the loneliness of
having an empty nest. Holland perceptively analyzes why this stage of life
has become a problem for many people and offers practical suggestions for
how to deal with it.” —Stephanie Coontz, author of Marriage, A History:
How Love Conquered Marriage

“We live now in an era where most people have only one or two children
and live to be at least 80 years old. That means there is a lot of life left
once the kids leave home, as most do by their early twenties. This wise
book provides a road map for how to make the most of the opportunities
ahead once the nest has emptied out. and how to handle the challenges,
too.” —Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, author of Emerging Adulthood: The Winding
Road from the Late Teens Through the Twenties

“A wealth of information based on research and interviews done by an

expert journalist; HappiNest will help navigate you out of the lonely post-
kids woods into a joyful next chapter.” —John “JW” and Pamela Gaye
Walker, EmptyNestersPlay.com

"A thoughtful meditation on living as an empty-nester, this book is chock

full ideas inspired by philosophy, social science, and hundreds of real-life
experiences. Holland has written a rich and compassionate work that will
surely help the many who will read it not only avoid despair and isolation
but, more importantly, lead increasingly meaningful and fulfilled lives. An
inspiring and sorely needed work." —Mario Luis Small, PhD, Grafstein
Family Professor of Sociology, Harvard University
HappiNest
 HappiNest

Finding Fulfillment When Your Kids Leave Home

Judy Holland

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
Published by Rowman & Littlefield
An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
www.rowman.com

6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL

Copyright © 2020 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or
mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission
from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Holland, Judy, 1959– author.

Title: HappiNest : finding fulfillment when your kids leave home / Judy Holland.
Description: Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references
and index. | Summary: “HappiNest provides a road map to help parents navigate new paths,
evolving relationships and existential challenges when their kids leave home. This book distills the
latest research and presents vignettes from interviews with more than 300 experts, including
psychologists, sociologists, seasoned empty nesters, and fledglings”—Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019048449 (print) | LCCN 2019048450 (ebook) | ISBN 9781538130582 (cloth) |
ISBN 9781538130599 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Empty nesters—Psychology. | Parent and child. | Separation (Psychology)
Classification: LCC HQ1059.4 .H645 2020 (print) | LCC HQ1059.4 (ebook) | DDC 306.874—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019048449
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019048450

TM
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National
Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO
Z39.48-1992.
For my husband John
And the three lights of my life:
Lindsay, Maddie, and Jack
 Foreword

I generally don’t agree to write blurbs or forewords for friends’ books

because part of my job for years was to do author interviews for National
Public Radio. I felt that it was best to stay out of the book promotion
business because I might be creating a conflict among my many bosses and
my many friends. However, exceptions must be made for friends who are
also neighbors, and I am happy to be making an exception now. Some
years ago, Judy Holland and her family moved in across the street from us
and although we didn’t know it, the move was a step toward the empty
nest, an effort by Judy and her husband, John Starr, to make their lives a
little easier by living near schools. We watched from over the road as the
family staggered out of the house with sports equipment and loaded it into
the car for road trips. We watched as the children had big noisy parties and
we wondered whether their parents knew. But then the kids grew up and
one by one went away to college. We watched the nest grow empty. And
because while she was dragging gear bags and driving kids somewhere,
Judy had always studied what was happening around her and written
about it, we should have predicted that a book about this experience
would be a logical next step—and here it is.
Judy’s ideas about empty nesters and how they fare, moving as she
says “through one of life’s most daunting transitions,” immediately made
me think of the baby boom. Before we had the boomers and all they have
disrupted in our lives, I doubt we thought much about empty nesters. I
imagine that American families with girls hoped they would marry and
helped as best they could to make that happen. The parents of boys, even
in the period between the world wars, hoped for their sons to be
prosperous and to support their families. Now, the more than 65 million
Americans born between 1943 and 1960 have changed all that and taught
us to look differently at what young men and women will do with their
lives. They have also forced us to always keep them in mind, those
boomers, and what they’re up to, what they need (housing, health care),
how they are doing, and what else they may change about this country
before they are done. And now that we have a term for the “daunting
transition” to the time after the children leave home, we have looked even
more closely at what is going on with the aging generations following the
baby boom decade. Judy’s book, HappiNest, lays it out for us with the good
parts and the bad and with some guidance for making the best of what is
ahead when children leave home and parents find themselves living in an
empty nest.
Let me get one thing out of the way early on: My husband and I have
no children. We have always lived in an empty nest and we will never
experience the change that the departure of children for the wide world
brings. Therefore, I do not come to this book as a helpful read on how to
redecorate my nest or reorganize my much less busy life. But although this
book will surely be helpful for people looking for that kind of guidance, it
goes in a quite different direction. Judy is interested in making a spiritual
investment in the lives of people she will touch with this book. Big Hint: the
literary/philosophical quote that heads each chapter gets rolling in chapter
1 with Khalil Gibran. Judy suggests that the wrenching experience of seeing
your last child depart the family home could, with some effort on your
part, “trigger spiritual awakening.” She returns often to the life of the spirit,
without being at all preachy about it, and slips her ideas into the book
along with anecdotes about people who have been stressed by the
difficulty of seeing their children off to a new life but have found a way to
manage their unhappiness by looking around for their own new beginning.
Not everything works for the empty nesters Judy writes about. Many
of them look around their empty nest and notice this old man or old
woman grumbling somewhere over there and wonder why the bright and
beautiful child left and not this nasty old creature. Some of them look
around and find their mate of many years is preparing his/her own exit,
unnoticed until this minute by the other parent deeply engaged with
children. Sometimes that works, freeing both parents, and sometimes it
doesn’t, leaving one person without sufficient emotional or financial
support. Judy suggests, by anecdote and example, that if effort is required
to repair the relationship overshadowed by children, it is often well worth
the probably painful effort to try. And she has some amusing and
sometimes surprising ways to do that. One of them appears at first glance
to come out of Good Housekeeping or perhaps some version of Cosmo for
the Older Gal: take dance lessons. But again, Judy surprised me by offering
research that suggests a sweet and sexy graduation from a course in
ballroom dancing.
Perhaps the best-covered new phenomenon caused by the empty
nest is that it doesn’t always stay empty. We’re not talking about the
spinster daughter returning home to live on the fringes of the parents’ lives
and help around the house. That’s what happens in nineteenth-century
novels. These days the kiddies cruise back into the home and settle in,
expecting and generally getting the same kind of care and attention they
had in their younger days. Laundry figures prominently in the
conversations I have had with friends in formerly empty nests. Judy says
that one of the most dangerous aspects of this reentry is that the young
people are hoping to re-up their relationship with The Bank of Mom and
Dad, and unless parents take a firm line they may find that their own
retirement will not be happening. Judy’s thorough research on this and the
other topics she covers is enlightening if sometimes a bit chilling. She notes
that children often truly need their parents’ help and there is no choice but
to give it, but of course it’s also possible a child raised by responsible
parents will be responsible about money, especially Mom and Dad’s
money.
This is, it seems to me, one of the most interesting generational
changes; much as I loved my parents it never occurred to me to move back
in with them after college. I went a great distance in the opposite direction
and moved to London to take my first job in broadcasting. My mother
retaliated by telling me that if I could afford to go overseas to live I could
certainly afford to do without the allowance of my college years. I found
out much later that she was even more furious when I agreed with her.
But, again, Judy’s research puts up a blinking yellow light aimed at parents
who may be offering help that may not help either the parents or the child.
This book is generally optimistic about refilling the empty nest
perhaps with visiting grandchildren, with new jobs, with returning to a
previous passion, but makes clear that it is a lot of work. And of course the
fledglings that fly out of the empty nest grow up and grow stronger and my
observation is they often become more interesting. They reengage with
their families as adults to adults. And parents grow older and will likely find
it necessary to reinvent their own lives more than once. It’s not exactly
another empty nest moment, but with age comes loss of friends and family
members and a need to find a way to survive that experience.
Transcendence is what Judy suggests; pursue a course of action that will
inspire and be good for other people, something that will add meaning to
your life. It would be a good idea, she says, to get started early on this
mission, maybe right after the kids leave home. After all, you will have
leisure time for the first time in forever. And Judy, who never stops moving,
would not want us to waste that precious time.
Linda Wertheimer
Former host of All Things Considered
National Public Radio
 Introduction

There is no friendship, no love, like that of the parent for the child.
Henry Ward Beecher

Parenthood isn’t like other close relationships. The whole point is that the
other person is going to leave you—and that can be heartbreaking. After
years of building a nest for your kids, you realize that you don’t own them,
you are just renting them for a while. And although it can feel natural to
swoop down and protect them after they leave, you must step back and
allow them to handle life’s challenges so they can learn to live on their
own.
Not only must you trust that they will find their way, but you also
need to reinvent yourself—a complex and multifaceted task. Re-feathering
the nest involves reassessing your values and priorities, resurrecting
interests, setting new goals, cultivating relationships, adjusting parenting,
and contributing to something larger than yourself.
The transition to the empty nest is unsettling and can throw you into
existential crisis, sending you searching for purpose and meaning. After you
finish the daily grind of child-rearing, you may be relieved, but also feel a
visceral void. Your zeal for climbing the career ladder, striving for social
status, and collecting material things is likely to subside, as is common in
middle age. Friends and relatives may suffer from illness or pass away,
igniting an urgent need to make sense of it all.
But the empty nest is different for everybody. While some parents
celebrate as their fledglings soar, others fret as their offspring struggle or
join the one in three young adults who “boomerangs” back home. Most
young adults hover in between, taking a winding road to adulthood: going
to school longer, settling on careers later, and finding mates further down
the road than their parents did, if at all. Some parents remain on call from
afar when their kids face extra challenges, such as serious illness,
depression, or a learning issue. Some couples who have led lives wedded
to their kids instead of each other are headed toward the empty nest
rocks. Many empty nesters are stretched to the breaking point as they
assist their kids as well as their parents, who are living longer and requiring
lots of help. As life expectancy continues to climb, many of today’s empty
nesters are siphoning off retirement funds and staying in the workforce
longer than ever to make ends meet.
You will face a different kind of empty nest depending on how old you
are. If you are among the 65 million Americans born between 1943 and
1960, you’re considered a baby boomer and should be well poised to
reinvent yourself sans enfants. Boomers are known as rugged
individualists, living lives full of interests and passionate causes. After their
kids leave, many are returning to earlier pursuits such as painting, dabbling
in politics, or playing the piano, according to Robert W. Levenson, a
psychology professor at Berkeley.[1] But boomers tend to be less financially
secure than their parents in the so-called Silent Generation, who came of
age in a thriving economy, when conditions were ripe for amassing great
wealth.[2] Boomers weathered the financial storm of the mid-1980s, and
are retiring later, with less money and fewer benefits, according to Neil
Howe, a historian, economist, demographer, and coauthor of Generations.
[3]

Born in 1959, my husband John Starr and I straddle two generations,

feeling like we have one foot with baby boomers and the other with Gen-
Xers. If you are a Gen-Xer, born between 1961 and 1981, you are more
likely than a boomer to be financially shaky, but also more inclined to be
self-reliant. With more women in the workforce, many Gen-Xers were
“latchkey kids,” coming home after school to an empty house, chores, and
responsibility. Hard hit by the Great Recession, they have struggled to buy
homes.[4] Unlike those in the Silent Generation, who held mortgage parties
at age 45 to 50 to celebrate paying off their homes, Gen-Xers “have
pumped cash out of their mortgage, are leveraged to the hilt, and have no
idea how they will retire,” Howe says, “and that’s going to hugely influence
what the empty nest experience is.”[5]
Despite these challenges, today’s empty nesters have far more
opportunities than those in previous generations. We can find information
in a flash on the Internet, connect to others around the world
instantaneously, work remotely, and travel faster and more efficiently.
Better nutrition, more exercise, and advances in health and medicine have
led to increased longevity, prompting many empty nesters to prepare for a
second or third act. We have a longer time horizon to rediscover ourselves
than our parents did, which can lead to greater fulfillment.
Regardless of how old you are, transitioning to an empty nest is tricky
and requires moving mindfully. You are far from alone: 22.5 million couples
were empty nesters in 2014, with their youngest kid older than 18 and no
longer living under their roof, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.[6] To get
a grip on the reality of empty nesters today, I have interviewed more than
300 people, including therapists, social workers, psychoanalysts,
neuroscientists, psychologists, sociologists, and empty nesters who have
shared with me their wisdom, struggles, and strategies. In HappiNest, I
have distilled research that has been buried in broader studies on aging,
romantic love, emerging adulthood, and long-term relationships. I am
deeply grateful for these sources who have enlightened me and helped
create a pool of wisdom on empty nesting.
As my husband and I adjust to life without kids under our roof, we are
experiencing the themes of every chapter in a personal way. We are
learning to listen more and lecture less to our oldest child Lindsay, a
singer/songwriter who writes “Americana” and is aiming for the charts in
Nashville. I have persuaded my music-loving husband to stop trying to
“improve” her lyrics to satisfy his middle-aged sensibilities. We frequently
drive our 155-pound Great Dane, Hudson, and yellow lab puppy, Babboo,
to visit our middle child Maddie, who is on the mend from a head injury
and finishing college. We tell ourselves she is just as happy to see us as she
is the dogs, although it doesn’t look that way. When she joined her college
equestrian team as a beginning walk/trot rider, I was terrified she could
fall. But I also applaud as she pursues a new passion, while preparing to
enter the nonprofit world. John and I are both getting better at calming our
jitters as our son Jack plays top-level college lacrosse, attempting to stop
100 mph balls from slamming into the goal—or him. I have learned to stop
nagging him about homework, eating right, and getting enough sleep, now
that he has become an NCAA championship goaltender and his lifestyle is
more disciplined than my own.
To better understand our young adult kids and live with grace in the
empty nest, I have tapped my journalist’s skills, honed from decades in
newsrooms, including as Capitol Hill correspondent for Hearst Newspapers.
I have discovered a treasure trove of wisdom that has helped me
reinvigorate my relationship with my husband and remember why I fell in
love with him in the first place. I have placed a higher priority on my most
important relationships, taking time to both prune and broaden my social
network to include new friends who soothe my soul. My relentless
research to find wisdom in the empty nest has helped me transform
childhood passions into new pursuits and muster the courage to march
toward my dreams. I find joy aiming for the Aristotelian idea of eudaimonia
—working to become the best version of myself, seeking purpose, and
serving others. In so doing, I have found deeper meaning and fulfillment
than ever before. Researching and writing HappiNest has changed the way
I approach each and every day. By reading this book, you too can gain a
deeper understanding of how to move gracefully through one of life’s most
daunting transitions. As you travel through this new territory, you can use
the tools in this book to better navigate the journey ahead.
A few days before my last child left for college, it was those pint-sized
boxes of chocolate milk that got me, the ones I bought by the case for my
kids. Who would drink them now? A week later, I found a solution: My
husband and I would add those chocolate milks to our coffee and make
mocha. Now we stock those cartons for us. That’s what you do: reinvent
with a twist.
1. Robert W. Levenson, telephone interview by author, September 27,
2018.
2. Neil Howe, “The Silent Generation, ‘The Lucky Few’ (Part 3 of 7),”
Forbes, August 13, 2014,
https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/2014/08/13/the-silent-
generation-the-lucky-few-part-3-of-7/#19914b4d2c63.
3. Neil Howe, “The Boom Generation, ‘What a Long Strange Trip’ (Part 4 of
7),” Forbes, August 20, 2014,
https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/2014/08/20/the-boom-
generation-what-a-long-strange-trip-part-4-of-7/#2d41e5c46197.
4. Neil Howe, “Generation X: Once Xtreme, Now Exhausted (Part 5 of 7),”
Forbes, August 27, 2014,
https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/2014/08/27/generation-x-once-
xtreme-now-exhausted-part-5-of-7/#6c9e2dfa4843.
5. Neil Howe, telephone interview by author, October 8, 2018.
6. Lindsay M. Monte, “Counting the Chicks after They’ve Flown: Shared and
Non-Shared Fertility among Empty Nesters” (paper, Annual Meeting of the
Population Association of America, Chicago, IL, April 27–29, 2017),
https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/working-
papers/2017/demo/SEHSD-WP2017-27.pdf.
 Section I
Finding Yourself in the Empty Nest