At that moment the final child leaves the family home, you and your spouse go through a transition from parenting to empty nesters. For some, perhaps wives more than husbands, this is almost like postpartum depression as you are confronted with the grief that comes from a loss of a major stage in your life.

So today we’re going to be talking about Empty Nest Syndrome: the impact, the causes and how to support your marriage through this transition.

What Is Empty Nest Syndrome?

It is more often associated with women but for both parents, ENS creates a transition in life and a change in roles and responsibilities[i]. This change can be challenging to go through. Sometimes there are feelings of loneliness, depression or distress that come when the final child leaves the family home[ii].

I remember seeing this when I came to pick Verlynda up to move from Vancouver Island, where she was living with her folks. She was the last child. And I was totally unprepared for the grief that I saw. I guess I was inconsiderate: it had not occurred to me that this would be difficult for Verlynda’s mom.

Empty Nest: Good or Bad for Happiness?

I would tend to think that if you have a good relationship with the last child leaving home, even if you are looking forward to the independence and no more making lunches and the freedom of having an open conversation with your spouse in your home and all that…there’s still some grief at the time of depart.

But, is it a positive or a negative for most people, overall?

Most research shows that for the majority of people, children leaving home is good for marital satisfaction and can also be good for overall life satisfaction.

A classic study from 1975[iii] reports that 71% of couples consider their post-parenting lives to be as good as or better than their lives with children in the house, with only 6% of women and no men reporting that their lives are universally worse.

A slightly more recent study by White & Edwards[iv] surveyed 402 parents and found that children leaving produced significant improvements for martial happiness regardless of the characteristics of the children or parents. Similarly, another study finds that children leaving the home improves psychological wellbeing for parents and Mitchell & Lovegreen (2009) found that only a minority of parents experience a negative "empty nest syndrome”[v].

Who knew, right? Do you think our 11 year old is ready to live on her own?

Popular wisdom paints the empty nest phase as one of the loneliest and hardest times in a parent’s life. But for a majority of parents, this clearly isn’t the case. So what are the benefits of the last child moving out?

The researchers found that children moving out allows for increased "alone time" as a couple, more intimacy and spontaneity, greater freedom, and improved financial conditions[vi]. The general picture here is that it gives you more time and resources to spend on each other, rather than on the kids. All of this can positively impact marital satisfaction.

However, contact with children is still important. While marital satisfaction may increase after children leave, overall life satisfaction only increases when the parents remain in frequent contact with the children[vii].

That’s a very interesting caveat. Your marriage may improve, but without the kids still in your life, the net gain to your overall life satisfaction isn’t much. This makes perfect sense because you’ve invested so much in your children. Staying in touch allows you to maintain the value of that connection you’ve created.

So the empty nest stage can, if you keep in regular contact with the children, be good for marriage. However, it is also possible that children leaving the home can be a crisis time for marriages due to the sudden changes in routine and identity this stage creates[viii]. Some research finds that the empty nest phase of marriage is often the least satisfying,