empty nest

American  

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.

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empty nest Cultural  

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

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empty nest Idioms  

1. 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]

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Discover More

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

Etymology

Origin of empty nest

First recorded in 1885–90

Example Sentences

Parents spend months steeling themselves to face an empty nest.

From Los Angeles Times • Sep. 1, 2025

As an empty nest looms, I have vowed to savor even the most mundane moment of this final school year.

From Los Angeles Times • Sep. 12, 2024

It's a different, twisted sort of empty nest syndrome that Joe realizes as his youngest children, the twins, are about to graduate from high school.

From Salon • Dec. 9, 2023

In line with tradition, since the last child in both families was getting married, their parents were loaded into a wheelbarrow and dumped into a body of water to celebrate their empty nest.

From Seattle Times • Sep. 14, 2023

Molly looked up at the empty nest site.

From "Frightful's Mountain" by Jean Craighead George