Empty Nest Syndrome: when loneliness takes over the home

The Empty Nest Syndrome It is a disorder associated with the loss process suffered by parents when their children leave the family home.

Empty Nest Syndrome

Have you ever wondered how the moods? The answer to this question is complex, since they are born in the middle of a torrent of information that comes from both the inside and the outside of the person. We are not emotionally autonomous beings, with feelings that are born spontaneously in us and turn outwards in our actions and our way of expressing affective states; in any case, nur feelings are born in the continuous feedback with what happens around us.

Bearing this in mind, it is not strange to think that our emotional states are due, at least in part, to type of relationship we have with others and the degree to which we have occasion to relate to certain people.

Definition: the loneliness of the silent home

The Empty Nest Syndrome is a clear example of this. This concept is used to refer to the feeling of loneliness and sadness

that fathers, mothers and caregivers in general experience when the young people they once cared for become emancipated and stop sharing a home with them. It is common for Empty Nest Syndrome to occur when children leave home to move to school. city ​​where their faculty is located, when they decide to go live alone and take care of themselves or when they marry. In all cases something similar happens: something changes in the day-to-day of caregivers, because certain people are no longer as present as before.

This feeling of loss does not have to be based only on the absence of contact with the children, but rather can have a negative effect on self-image if great value was placed on being responsible for caring for another person. The search for meaning in what is done can be disrupted if much of that existential effort has to do with raising and caring for others.

Differences between men and women

A simple variation such as going from sharing a house with a child to quitting can profoundly disrupt the repertoire of emotional states of parents and guardians, because emotions are related to objective changes that occur in context.

However, today the context is determined, in part, by the gender assigned to each person. As for the gender bias women have had a traditional role linked to upbringing and the domestic sphere, also are the most likely to experience Empty Nest Syndrome: an inequality expressed objectively (the distribution of domestic tasks) also entails variations in the perception of this objectivity (the departure of the children from the home).

But, in addition, it is possible that part of the reasons why women tend to experience more this feeling of loss is found in the fact that these episodes frequently coincide with the menopause.

This does not mean that men cannot develop the typical symptoms of Empty Nest Syndrome, but in statistical terms it is less common.

What is happening with the Empty Nest Syndrome today?

It is very possible that in recent years the effects of the Empty Nest Syndrome are being affected by the changes in lifestyle and the economic crisis. On the one hand, every time there is a greater number of young adults unable to become emancipated due to lack of income. On the other hand, the fact that birth rates are falling in many countries may reflect that each time there are more families with only one child, which could mean that their emancipation would mean a further change abrupt.

Furthermore, the demands of a stricter labor market lead many young people to work far away from their place of residence. habitual, which hinders family reconciliation and makes meetings with parents less frequent and more spaced in the weather.

It is also not so frequent that little time passes between the time when children are emancipated and the moment they have a child, so in some cases people who experience Empty Nest they don't even have a chance to care for their grandchildren (which, on the other hand, if they exist could be hundreds of kilometers away).

Partial loss of contact with a son or daughter may seem difficult to bear on its own, but the way in which it is experience this depends largely on material conditions such as those provided by the labor market and the economic situation of the families