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Parenting
Empty Nest, Empty Heart
A good father knows that he must be there to be left by his young adult child.
Posted April 28, 2025 Reviewed by Jessica Schrader
Key points
- The closer a father has been with his child, the harder it can be to say goodbye.
- Putting the child's needs before your own is one of the most loving acts a father can perform.
- Fathers, not just mothers, experience the bittersweet emotions associated with a young adult leaving the nest.
Becoming a father is the most challenging and yet elusive task a man can undertake.
It entails countless tasks and endeavors: providing food and shelter, creating a psychologically supportive and nourishing home life, engaging in the cognitive and relational stimulation that children need, alerting them to and protecting them from dangers, offering consistent acceptance, care and warmth, modeling (for both sons and daughters) what it means to be a self-assured male adult—the list goes on and on.
But at a certain point, there is another crucial duty that must be recognized and undertaken by fathers. Parents who have had to totally readjust their lives and their identities from day one in the service of raising their children must then be prepared to let their children go.
As well as the many enriching gains of parenthood, there are the painful losses. Some of these take place during the beginning and middle of childrearing; the loss of independence, of freedom, of a potentially higher standard of living, of career and professional development.
Some of these take place during adolescence, when children begin to experience the stirrings of independence. This necessitates the dismantling of the pedestal that children may have placed us on, and the subsequent loss of being admired, adored, obeyed, idolized and idealized.
But a considerable loss—and in some ways the most colossal and enduring one—takes place at the conclusion of childrearing. Because while human offspring require total care early on, they steadily move towards separateness, and experience the growing wish and desire to be autonomous, and then, ultimately, to leave.
We might say that if parents have done their job well, their children will not run away from home, nor stay home, but walk away from home—towards whatever version of success and self-reliance they yearn for.
So mothers and fathers have to fulfill the paradoxical requirement of being there for their children in order to be left behind by them.
For many adults who were insecure and uncertain of themselves, or who found in their child an intense relationship that they have had with no one else, there is considerable dread when it comes to a child’s prospective departure, and the painful wish to hold onto what cannot be held back.
Dominic was one such father who consulted with me. He and his wife, Delta, divorced when their daughter, Elena, was 2 years old and from that time on, Elena became Dominic’s most significant other. He had little interest in anything other than his work and his daughter—no close friends, no hobbies, no dating. Meanwhile, Delta remarried and she and her second husband started a new family, giving birth in quick succession to two sons.
So Elena always felt like she was more special to her father than to her mother, not having had to share him with half-siblings and a step-parent. And Dominic took great delight in the time that the two of them spent together, and the many interests that they shared, especially their regular weekend hikes on the wooded trails in the state park near their home. It was a source of pride for both of them that they were so close.
But as Elena hit the second half of high school, she naturally became less interested in spending time with her father and more interested in spending time with her friends. She joined the school's hiking club, which meant that when she did hike, it wasn't with her father—this left him feeling both pleased (that she continued to take delight in hiking) and heartbroken (that he had lost his favorite hiking partner).
At the beginning of her senior year, when she expressed an interest in going to an out-of-state college that several of her classmates were applying to, Dominic felt abandoned and betrayed. Why would she want to leave town when they had so much in common? He subtly tried to persuade her to attend an in-state college (not coincidentally, the same one that he had attended) but Elena sensed his clinginess, which only strengthened her desire to expand her geographical horizons.
In my work with Dominic, I tried to help him understand that he was unintentionally standing in the way of Elena’s future. It was surely going to sadden him, in understandable ways, for his daughter to leave him behind. But while Elena’s leave-taking would open up a deep cavity in his life, his most loving act as a father would be to put her needs in front of his own and allow her to fly toward a future of her own choosing rather than clip her wings and attempt to prevent her from taking off.
What I have seen in my work over the years is that it can be as difficult for fathers as it is for mothers to recognize that children, no matter how deeply cared for and about, are not to be possessed or owned by their parents. Laying the groundwork for your young adult to “walk away from home” is one of the most difficult but impressive achievements of fatherhood.
