Meaning
A parent whose children have grown and gone - the household suddenly quiet, the bedrooms suddenly spare, the syndrome optional. The word frames the years after active parenting as a demographic, and marketers have never let go of it since. Gentle, slightly marketing-flavoured; the related syndrome is disputed rather than settled medicine, which the entry takes care to say. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The image is the nest: when the fledglings leave, the parents remain in the empty structure, and psychology borrowed the picture wholesale for empty nest syndrome - the grief, loneliness, and loss of purpose some parents feel when children depart, a transitional experience most studied in single and stay-at-home parents. The syndrome itself has been contested from the start: a 1989 journal article asked whether it was myth or reality, and later work emphasized the freedoms - Clay's 2003 finding of promoted autonomy and improved relationships - while noting the world's lack of sympathy for parents expected to be glad. The person is the empty nester, formed from empty nest plus the agent suffix, and Wiktionary's citations track the word's softening: by 2005 the syndrome aspect had receded into the background of new freedoms, and by 2025 an empty nester on television is a comedian's setup line about teenagers and hurricanes. Demographically the empty nesters are a market segment; domestically they are two people re-learning the art of conversation.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- an empty nest
- empty nest
- empty nest syndrome
Usage Examples
- The empty nesters converted one bedroom to a studio and the other, briefly, to a shrine to silence.
- Empty-nester economics: two incomes, one phone plan nobody calls, and a freezer of portioned stews.
- The cruise brochures arrived the week the last child left, as if the industry had been waiting at the gate.