Ever since Chuck Blatt got divorced 14 years ago, he’s established a routine with his daughters — visits and dinners on Wednesdays, Fridays and every other weekend. But this month, it started to significantly change when both women went away to college, his youngest for her freshman year at the Chicago College of Performing Arts.
Conversations over the phone are already becoming the new norm, including sharing the occasional update on opera auditions or dorm activities, and there’s no promise of a visit until Thanksgiving. The “empty nesting” is hitting hard now that both are gone, Blatt said, but it’s not all doom and gloom.
“I’m looking forward to their next chapter and my next chapter,” he said. “They’re off to college, they’re becoming adults … and I’ve hopefully trained them enough to be self-sufficient.”
Blatt and many other parents in the Chicago area recently said a goodbye of sorts to their adult children, who moved out for school, the workforce or the military. There’s not one way people feel during this big transition, but, according to one psychologist, a mixture of relief and sadness is common. New opportunities are also usually on the horizon, she said.
“Just as profound as the transition to parenting is, I think the notion of transitioning out of full-time parenting is just as profound,” said Amy Bohnert, a psychology professor at Loyola University Chicago. “The joy that you might feel seeing your newborn child is unrivaled to any experience you’ll ever have in your life. Why wouldn’t it make sense that them going off on their home would feel just as important?”
When Blatt’s oldest daughter, Amanda, started at the University of Michigan two years ago, the 57-year-old Mayfair resident said it didn’t affect him quite as much. After all, he still had a child living in the area whom he saw frequently throughout the week, and his schedule stayed the same.
But after his youngest, Becca, moved into the dorms last week, he’s getting a taste of an empty nest, and there’s some upsides, including more flexibility. Blatt said he doesn’t have to worry about school pickups or drop-offs, or making it to rehearsal on time, and is planning to go to the theater more often. A property manager, Blatt said he’s also started scheduling meetings on Wednesdays, time he usually set aside for his daughters.
Even though Becca is living in downtown Chicago for college, he said she wants the full college experience — which means not seeing her parents constantly, he said. They’re instead swapping texts and Instagram messages.
“It’s like, OK, great, I did my job as a parent. Now they’re out of the house and off to college,” Blatt said. “I feel a sense of pride when it comes to that.”
“I feel a weight lifted off my shoulders in a way,” he continued. “I’m just happy because they’re happy, which is great. High school is stressful, the college process is stressful, so I feel like OK I’m through that and just a little more relaxed.”
A period of mourning
When children are growing up, the goal is for them to become more independent, Bohnert said. The process of parenting is in many ways about letting go, but that doesn’t make it easy, she said. In fact, Bohnert said the magnitude of a transition relates directly to how much stress people experience, and children leaving the house is typically a large shift for families.
It’s not uncommon for parents to experience something akin to mourning during this time, she said. There’s a loss of certainty — not being able to physically comfort a child when they’ve had a hard day, for example — as well as a loss of identity. In the midst of parenting, it’s hard to reconcile how quickly the time goes, she added. These feelings are colloquially referred to as “empty nest syndrome.”
“I’ve heard people describe sort of physically, viscerally feeling this loss,” she said. “It isn’t just a loss in your head, like they’re gone and it’s academic, but that it’s also just visceral and your whole body feels it.”
Heidi Stevens has written about some of these moments in her columns published in the Tribune. Although her son is still living at home, her daughter just started at Georgetown University. Stevens said she’s best friends with her daughter, and it’s hard to think about not seeing her for a couple of months.
“But it’s kind of a fun hard, because it’s exactly what should be happening,” Stevens said. “She should be going on to the next chapter of her life. She should be going and exploring the world and meeting new people. It’s not a sad thing. It’s not an illness, it’s not an accident, it’s wonderful. So you feel a little silly about your sadness, but it’s also a loss.”
For Stevens, the anticipation of the change was harder than the move-in itself. Her daughter seemed happy to be in a cool place, so she didn’t feel sad, although hugging her goodbye was difficult, Stevens said.
“I feel like she’s an adult now, and so I’m just trying to be present for her, next to her, and celebrate with her and cheer her on while she goes and does all this great stuff,” she said. “I don’t really feel like I’m in charge of her. I feel like I’m in charge of paying the tuition.”
Bohnert recommends that parents seek support from friends or, if needed, professionals during this time. She said it’s a process to make the house feel full again — potentially with new hobbies or activities — or simply accepting that it won’t feel quite the same again. She also cautioned against calling, texting or tracking children too much once they move out. Even though it might bring an immediate sense of comfort, it hurts the child in the long run, she said.
Prioritizing time with a spouse
If married, Bohnert said, it’s a good time to prioritize time with a spouse, and continue to find ways to enjoy each other’s company. After dropping the youngest of their three daughters off at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Andy Buchanan and his wife spent the night in the Lake Geneva area. He took a friend’s advice that they not return home to an empty house right away.
On that trip, Buchanan said he could feel a “reintroduction” starting with his wife.
“We were married 25 years ago, and when you’re raising three kids and they’re all close in age, you’re really just in the thick of it all the time,” the 58-year-old Lincoln Square resident said. “Most of your conversations are who’s going where, who needs what and did we sign them up for this. And now we could actually have other conversations.”
“I like my wife. We like to hang out, and it will be nice to just do that,” he added.
Kids returning home
For many people, like Larisa Mats, 49, of Buffalo Grove, the nest doesn’t stay empty forever. About a third of young adults aged 18 to 34 live in a parent’s home, according to a 2023 Pew Research Study. Mats’ oldest son recently moved back home after graduating from Bradley University in Peoria.
When both her sons were away for college, Mats said she went through a “mental reset,” where she took time to accept that her life would be different and visualize it. She even went on a yoga retreat for a week in Cabo, Mexico. She’s used these skills again in welcoming her son back home, which has been “great” overall, even when she’s had to make room for his 10-month old English springer spaniel, or her “fur grandbaby.”
“I love that we have the kind of relationship that he feels good staying here,” Mats said. “I know some parents might be, ‘Oh, I wish they would just move out.’ But our culture — we come from the former Soviet Union — is very family focused, and I just love that we’ve maintained the kind of relationship that he feels good about being with us, having dinner together, playing games after dinner.”
