Jamie Delaney didn’t know what to expect when she became an empty nester in 2023. She’d left her full-time job as a professor in child psychology 12 years ago to stay home with her two kids. Once her youngest went off to college in Florida, Delaney said she was lonely.
She moved from Pittsburgh to Houston, where her husband works. He splits his time between the two cities. Delaney tried to settle into a new life in Houston, without a packed schedule of shuffling kids to afterschool activities and various doctor appointments. She missed those days.
“I dropped my career to be a parent,” Delaney, 58, said. “And then all of a sudden, you know, my full-time job, I don’t have anymore.”
But Delaney’s empty nester phase didn’t last long.
Her 20-year-old daughter suffers from an autoimmune disease that flared up during her first year of college, Delaney said. Everything seemed great at first: “She joined a sorority, she was really happy, she liked her roommates.” But by the start of her second semester, Delaney said her daughter’s physical health “really started to deteriorate.” It became clear that she needed to come home to Pittsburgh, to be closer to her doctors.
So, Delaney came home to Pittsburgh, too, so mother and daughter could be together.
“I’m kind of, like, parenting again,” Delaney said.
“Empty nest syndrome” was coined in the early 1900s to describe the sense of loss and loneliness mostly mothers felt once all of their children left home. In recent decades, some parents have embraced the empty nester lifestyle to focus on reconnecting as couples after years of child rearing. But with high costs of living, student loan debt, rising mental health challenges among teens and young adults and other barriers that keep some adult children from launching a life on their own, it’s becoming more common for parents’ empty nest stage to be delayed, cut short or not happen at all.
More than half of young adults ages 18 to 24 live with their parents, census data shows. That includes college students who live at home in between semesters. And a 2023 paper found nearly half of adults ages 18 to 29 live with their parents, up from about 25% in 1960. The percentage of young adults living at home varies greatly by region with young adults in the Midwest least likely to live at home, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of government data.
The rise of multigenerational housing: Why we’re seeing more generations under one roof
Kari Cardinale, chief content officer and partner at Modern Elder Academy, an online school with workshops and destination retreats for midlife students, said people don’t really talk about the last stage of parenting that leaves some parents feeling like their home is a revolving door. Gen X was raised to believe that once a kid turns 18, they’re on their own.
“The world has changed,” she said.
Families are more emotionally connected than previous generations, fostering better, healthier familial relationships, Cardinale said. On the flip side, she said some adult children have mostly online friendships and find it difficult to build in-person relationships outside of their family.
More: The housing market needs more small homes. Here’s why that’s unlikely to happen.
“Kids just stay kids longer now,” Delaney said. She has friends who have adult children at home, too. These are smart and capable young adults, she said, but for families in the middle class and wealthier, “home has become a very comfortable place to be.”
“I just think that parenting is completely different for my generation than it was the generations before,” Delaney said.
Do moms struggle with empty nesting more than dads?
Gender has long played into the empty nester stereotype, Cardinale said, rooted in the image of a distraught mother who can’t function because her kids left home. That’s never been the large-scale truth, she said, although it is a big transition for mothers.
Suzanne Stavert, 64, spent 23 years focusing on her kids before she became an empty nester 10 years ago.
“It was really hard,” she said. “I felt really lost.”
Now, Stavert is a podcaster and travel writer touting the joys of empty nesting. She said she started writing about her experience as an empty nester and found a community online that turned into a second career. Since finding her passion for travel, Stavert encourages other empty nesters to go out and find adventure, too.
Lisa Stephen, a psychologist and wellness coach who focuses on motherhood, said moms still largely carry the weight of caregiving and parenthood, which often makes their transition to an empty nest challenging. She suggests moms take some time before their youngest child leaves home to plan for what they want that life stage to look like, whether it involves more focus on their career or pursuing a new hobby.
“There is nothing wrong with crying and missing your kids and wishing that you could go back in time,” Stephen said. “There’s nothing wrong with being deeply sad. And it is sad for a lot of people. For most people, I would say.”
It’s a big transition for fathers, too. Especially now, Cardinale said, as men play prominent roles in raising kids “in a way that their fathers probably were not,” by making lunches, reading bedtime stories and taking them to extracurricular activities.
Eric Scheve, a 54-year-old father in Cincinnati, Ohio, said he and his wife were equal partners in their parenting of two now-adult children. He said he’s talked to friends about the fun activities they are doing as empty nesters, but when it comes to expressing sadness from missing his children, he only feels comfortable talking about it with his wife.
“It feels like it’s time to broaden this transition experience for everybody,” Cardinale said, adding that a range of parents experience pain when their kids leave home, not just mothers.
Partners can help each other feel supported during a transition to empty nesting, Stephen said. But it’s not fair to ask adult children to help ease that sadness or sense of loss.
Parents turned empty nesters refocus on romance, health
There are still many parents successfully transitioning to the empty nester stage, and loving it. Andrew DiStefano, 59, said he’s been an empty nester for a decade. Both of his children are in their 30s and work as software engineers.
He and his wife got married young and had children right away, he said. Now, DiStefano said they are making up for lost time. The empty nester stage has given them “a chance to reestablish our connection as a couple.” They have more time now to focus on their health, too, by exercising more and taking long walks.
DiStefano, of Philadelphia, said he’s noticed “a big shift” in his neighborhood over the last 10 years, with more adult children moving back home and families living in multigenerational households for financial reasons, and to establish a stronger sense of community.
“Talking to our nieces and nephews and a lot of the younger generation, you know, we recognize how much harder it is to start a career and to start a family,” he said. “The financial pressures and impacts that the younger generation has − it really was a lot easier for us, 30 years ago, to get started.”
The “empty” part of empty nesting rings true, Scheve said. But he and his wife, Paola Cappellari, 53, are doing their best to fill that emptiness with new adventures, checking things off a bucket list and posting photos of accomplished tasks on social media. They recently started a blog, too.
Scheve said he’s leaning into romance a bit more, relishing the opportunity to “date” his wife again.
“This our chance to do stuff, you know?” Scheve said. “Because no one knows what life brings.”
‘They’re still, like, on the payroll.’ Setting boundaries with adult children
Scheve and Cappellari aren’t worried about their kids coming back home. But they’re prepared for it, and consider themselves a “safety net” for their adult children if anything should happen to them financially or health-wise. They know not all parents have the means to help their grown kids. According to a recent survey on savings.com, half of parents with adult children regularly send them money, with the average support per adult child at $1,474 a month.
More: Grown children won’t move out? What to do when your kid has a failure to launch
The key is setting boundaries, Cardinale said. Adult children shouldn’t expect their parents to cook and clean for them, or do their laundry. Having open and honest conversations as a family can help mitigate tension and give more autonomy to the young adults in the household.
It might be difficult for mothers and fathers to shift out parenting, she said, but moving into a more friend-like relationship leads to better living compatibility.
The bigger societal push that needs to happen, Stephen said, is normalizing having adult children move back home. Cardinale agrees.
“There’s a lot of judgement from society that somehow, if your kid comes back home, that’s bad,” Cardinale said. “That’s some sort of system failure, on their part or your part.”
It’s not true, both Cardinale and Stephen said. Still, a 2024 study from the Pew Research Center found more than 70% of parents of young adults say their children’s successes and failures reflect on their parenting. Nearly 60% say they’ve helped their children financially in the past year.
Sometimes, living together isn’t an option. Adult children with mental health challenges often need support, too, but their parents find themselves setting boundaries for their own health and safety.
Cheryl Hermansen, 59, of Campbell, California, said she and her husband “are technically empty nesters” since none of their kids live in their home. But “they’re still, like, on the payroll,” she said, and none of them have “really fully launched.”
“We’re empty, they don’t live with us,” she said. “But we still help them out a lot.”
She and her husband remarried when her son was 10, she said, and now her son and two stepsons are in their 30s. Their teen years were “very tumultuous,” Hermansen said, and all three have mental health challenges ranging from substance use disorder to bipolar disorder to depression and anxiety.
If she didn’t financially support her adult children, Hermansen said, “they wouldn’t make it.”
‘Completely unprepared’ and uncertain moving forward
A year after her daughter came home, Delaney said they are still living together in Pittsburgh. Delaney schedules her daughter’s doctor’s appointments and helps her plan her online class schedule. Her daughter is taking college classes part time while living at home.
It’s nice having her home, Delaney said. But if she could choose the ideal situation for her adult daughter, “I would definitely pick the healthy, happy, high functioning college student.”
For Delaney, it’s been one uncertainty after the next.
“I think we weren’t totally prepared for when they were gone, and then completely unprepared to have one come back,” Delaney said. “And really uncertain of how it will look, again, when they’re both gone.”
Madeline Mitchell’s role covering women and the caregiving economy at USA TODAY is supported by a partnership with Pivotal Ventures and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input. Reach Madeline at memitchell@usatoday.com and @maddiemitch_ on X.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Empty nesters reveal what it’s really like when kids move out in 2025
