Email a friendThe Empty Nest
Time flies, just like the cliché says. You’ve spent years nurturing and encouraging your children, watching them grow into independent young adults. Before you know it, they’re ready to move out, and move on.
Now what?
In The Empty Nest, thirty-one parents tell the truth about what happens when the kids leave home for good.
We dread this rite of passage, we anticipate it, we tell ourselves we’re going to love our newfound freedom, we try to make plans—but no matter how we approach it, we’re never quite prepared. In this fascinating collection, journalist Karen Stabiner has assembled essays by a wide variety of writers who have had to face an empty nest. Parents whose children left home last week join those with grandchildren to explore the ways that life changes once the offspring leave—unless, of course, they move back in again. The authors represent the full range of experience, from traditional nuclear families to single parents to gay parents, and they tell their stories with humor, grace, and poignancy.
In Flown Away, Left Behind, Anna Quindlen writes about losing the job she cares about the most, as her third child prepares to leave home. Charles McGrath describes the ten-year span between taking his second child to college and becoming a grandfather. Hillary Mills’ The Last Summe addresses the emotional estrangement that preceded her son’s departure, and the reconciliation that followed.
In the hilarious My Cart, Harvey Molotch writes about how the contents of his grocery cart changed once his children left home. Fabiola Santiago tells a be-careful-what-you-wish-for story of a daughter who has last-minute doubts about college. Susan Shreve bids farewell to the house where she and her husband raised four children, since a new chapter in her life seems to demand new surroundings as well. Karen Stabiner writes beautifully about the last days of high school, and about long-distance love.
The Empty Nest looks at the only relationship where love inevitably leads to splitting up. It covers emotions from uncertainty to relief, from depression to exhilaration, from the confusion of the newly-liberated to the serenity of a grandma who knows that parenting never ends.
Time flies, just like the cliché
Read Karen Stabiner’s post on The Huffington Post.
“Highly readable and engaging.”
—Washington Post
“Skillfully gathered and edited by L.A. writer Karen Stabiner…these writers create a much-needed road map…[Many of the] stories are rich with the kind of honesty you won't hear at graduation—stories of difficulties and rawness that keep the anthology from becoming too predictable.”
—Los Angeles Times
“Anyone dreading, savoring or recovering from their child's entering [adulthood], will recognize themselves in these bittersweet, boldly personal essays from more than 30 parents…Packed with hard-earned wisdom and snippets of advice, this comforting collection by pining parents softens the blow of the inescapable.”
—People Magazine
“This honest, insightful collection is for parents at any stage of the process—reminding us that the highest accomplishment of parenting is to raise children who can joyfully and successfully leave the nest, and to be the kind of parent who can let them go.”
—Hope Edelman, author of Motherless Mothers
“With breathtaking candor, humor and elegance, these essays probe the ambivalence being laid off from the one job that—no matter what else we do—will be our most important contribution to the world. The Empty Nest is a deeply affecting banquet of thoughts on the only love that must grow toward separation. You thought you knew the last word about saying goodbye; but, until now, you were mistaken.”
—Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of Cage of Stars
