Parents whose first child is about to leave home should prepare themselves for the emotional fallout.Â
But if it’s their last child flying the nest, they might barely notice they’ve gone, the findings of a study suggest.
Researchers said: ‘Experiencing children moving out for the first time is associated with decreasing life satisfaction among parents.’
But they added: ‘The last child moving out does not significantly decrease parental life satisfaction.’
The findings suggest that the ‘launching phase’ – when the first child goes – is much harder on parents than the ‘empty nest’ phase, when all have left.
File photo. Parents are less emotionally moved by their last child moving out
File photo shows students moving into new student accomodation
Study co-author Professor Tobias Wolbring said: ‘Once the last child moves out, parents already know better what to expect and how to handle the situation.’
A team from the Institute for Employment Research in Nuremberg and the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, tracked 5,000 households.
They found that mothers and fathers alike were less fulfilled by family life once the first child had left.
Parents’ satisfaction with their household income also dropped, possibly because ‘children still need financial support after they have moved out’, according to the academics.
Parents with just one child took their moving out particularly hard, ‘highlighting the closer relationship between parents and child’.
Mothers who didn’t work were more affected when the first child left.
The loss of the parental role may leave these women struggling more with their social identity, the researchers suggested.
Meanwhile, fathers started doing 15 minutes more housework once a child left home, and mothers reduced how much housework they did by about the same amount.
‘We can only speculate about the reasons,’ said Professor Wolbring.
