empty nest

noun

1. a household in which one or more parents live after the children have left home:

   Our only child just moved into her first apartment, so we have an empty nest.

2. a stage in a parent’s life after the children have left home.

empty nest

1. The stage in a family's cycle when the children have grown up and left home to begin their own adult lives.

Notes

For parents, the empty nest sometimes results in midlife anxiety .

Word History and Origins

Origin of empty nest¹

First recorded in 1885–90

Idioms and Phrases

The home of parents whose children have grown up and moved out. For example, Now that they had an empty nest, Jim and Jane opened a bed-and-breakfast . This expression, alluding to a nest from which baby birds have flown, gave rise to such related ones as empty-nester , for a parent whose children had moved out, and empty-nest syndrome , for the state of mind of parents whose children had left. [c. 1970]

Example Sentences

They have passed through life’s major transitions—like having kids or an empty nest—that often change people.

From Time

My mother raised me and my brother and sister until we were mostly empty nest, and then she went back to school and got a degree in gerontology to study aging and the needs and wants of the elderly.

From Ozy

The National Stadium is described as suffering empty-nest syndrome because it lags so far behind any notion of sustainable use.

From The Daily Beast

I hope as they mayn't find an empty nest some fine morning, and all the birds away.

From Project Gutenberg

I even told her of the little empty nest from which the young birds had long since flown away.

From Project Gutenberg

In the tree branches that clattered outside, her eyes fell on an empty nest.

From Project Gutenberg

An empty nest, riddled by the wind, hung dishevelled from a twig.

From Project Gutenberg

Raising the now empty nest he threw it with all his might at Dominic, and both his fists after it.

From Project Gutenberg