Enter Empty-Nesterdom
I’ve recently joked with some friends of mine: “I’ll be an empty-nester in September. When you see a flare, come with a few beers and rescue me.”
This Friday my wife and I enter Empty-Nesterdom. For the first time since December of 1996, when a bout of nausea prompted us to stop by CVS for a quick pregnancy test, we will no longer devote a large percentage of thought and energy to our children. At least not all the time. Granted, our son’s increasingly independent lifestyle over the last number of years has gradually given my wife and me more time on our own, and we’ve slowly grown accustomed to what life might look like on the other side, but I’d be lying if I said that I don’t have a degree of trepidation about the future. None of our kids will be an easy drive away, and one isn’t even an easy flight away. We won’t be able to plan a spontaneous lunch or walk with our kids. Every visit will have to be crosschecked against multiple calendars and planned in advance. When our twin girls left for school five years ago, we ended up seeing one of them once a semester (Kentucky) and the other once a year (California). Cincinnati will similarly limit our visits, and we may go for long periods of time without seeing any of them.
Although my three kids are doing pretty well, I’ve found that having adult children leads to a different sort of parental anxiety, because adult children have adult problems. Gone are the days when their spirits could be lifted merely by me picking them up and jumping up and down. God, I loved those days. I love these days too for sure. It’s just more uncertain, and I of course have little to no control of the situation. Last week I looked over a 401k rollover procedure for my daughter, and I was happy to actually contribute something of value. I love it when there’s a right answer to a problem.
Mostly, though, it’s not so simple. A while back, the psychotherapist and author Lori Gottlieb wrote a great article in The Atlantic called “How to Land Your Kid in Therapy.” It’s nearly a decade old now, but the revelations still ring true: that as parents we’ve overprotected our children to the extent that they experience difficulty in their twenties and thirties, so unable are they to handle challenges, to be resilient in the face of difficulties. The article is well-summarized by the following sentence: “…many parents will do anything to avoid having their kids experience even mild discomfort, anxiety, or disappointment, with the result that when, as adults, they experience the normal frustrations of life, they think something must be terribly wrong.”
This was written in 2011 when the worries of much of the world paled in comparison to what young people face today. We’re asking an awful lot of young adults to handle the adversities of COVID-19, a sinking economy, isolation, cancelled school, melting icecaps, political divisiveness, mean-spirited leaders, hateful mob mentality gone rampant online, and a whole host of other concerns, when we as adults set them up for failure to overcome life’s great challenges.
I’d like to think that my wife and I didn’t fall into the overprotective parenting trap, but I’m sure I’m fooling myself. I’m sure I sent one to many emails to their teachers over the years and had my kids check in too often when they were out. Ultimately, we probably did okay, but I believe that my children are up to the task of weathering life’s great challenges likely in spite of their upbringing rather than because of it. It’s not going to be easy, but I believe that they’ll be among those who navigate these treacherous times, not with perfection, but with perseverance.
But a larger question looms: will my wife and I be up to the task? Will we find balance, meaning and determination absent the diversion of active parenting?
Stay tuned.