It's not a new topic, but it is a reality that's encroaching ever closer into our lives.

The seasons of life each have their distinctive qualities. The autumn years retain their lyrical splendor even when the nest is empty.

Into the empty nest

Tuesday night, and 55-year-old retired teacher Huang Hui-chen (not her real name) has just come home after classes at a local community college for seniors in Taoyuan. Climbing slowly to her third-floor apartment, she's greeted by a gloomy silence as she opens the door. As she walks in, staring vacantly, she suddenly recalls what her elder daughter told her the day before: "Mom, tomorrow I'm leaving for mainland China on business for a week!" Across the balcony, she can see into the facing apartment: the vibrant scene of a family eating and chatting together. Abruptly reminded of joyful times gone by, Hui-chen chokes back tears.

"Suddenly the children are grown, each following their own pace in life-but mom is never in their plans," sighs Hui-chen. Her husband passed away early on, her elder daughter is busy with her career and her younger daughter is studying far away in Japan. To pass the time, she attends day classes and takes part in community activities. But when night falls, the loneliness of the empty nest is hard to endure. "It's like a vast, empty hole in my heart; I can't get a handle on anything."

Ms. Shih, a 48-year-old professional, finds herself in similar circumstances. After burning the candle at both ends for many years she's finally been able to put child rearing behind her. She had thought she would at long last enjoy the leisure time she had been craving; she never imagined her sense of loss would be this strong.

"On weekends when the kids were studying at the cram school, and I was home alone with the dog in an empty house, I'd just space out, not knowing what to do!" Still transitioning between the full and empty nest stages, Ms. Shih yearns for someone to talk to, but she's long lost contact with her friends and has no one to confide in.

But don't fret!

The empty nest period, also called the postparental period, is the time when parents live in an empty house after their children have grown up and moved on. This wasn't a problem during agrarian times, but in today's industrialized society, amid urbanization, falling birthrates and global mobility, the empty nest has become an increasingly unavoidable heartache for modern parents in their middle age.

With the surge of individualism, even when children are with their parents, the psychological distance between them is growing ever greater. Author Lung Ying-tai, in her new book Watching Him Go, offers a poignant description of this sense of loss as the children spread their wings and take flight:

"He [eldest son Hua-an] is 21 now, in college. He happens to attend the university where I teach. But even when he's going in the same direction I'm headed, he's reluctant to take a ride with me. And when he does, he keeps his headphones on... the music only he can hear is a tightly shut door. Sometimes when he's across the street waiting for the bus, I look down from the window in my building: a tall, skinny kid, his eyes gazing at the grey sea. I can only imagine: his inner world is as deep and turbulent as mine, but I can't get in."

"Slowly, slowly, I came to understand that the so-called parent-child relationship means nothing more than the bond between us; that is, in this life, I'm constantly watching his back as he walks ever farther away."

Lung expresses this mild sorrow gracefully. However, in mainland China, with its long-time one-child policy in which each child is considered a "child emperor," many parents cling to an anguished unwillingness to let go.

Every fall when a new crop of freshmen start college, schlepping their bedding, clothes, books, and food from home, and even rice cookers and thermoses, their parents come with them, traveling by overnight trains from all parts of the country and crowding into the major university towns. For the sake of looking after their children for a few more days, these doting parents gladly nibble at prepared snacks, lay down bedrolls and endure the elements on campus in such a way that onlookers don't know whether to laugh or cry. This has become a common spectacle in China.

The full nest period may be the glory days of life, but it passes swiftly by amid its hustle and bustle.

Mission: Mid-life growth

To have feelings of loss caused by an empty nest is one of the transitions of a middle age. In her dissertation, Lee Ching-yi of the Graduate Institute of Family Education and Counseling at National Chiayi University looks at the problem from a macroscopic perspective as a mission of mid-life growth.

For instance, the empty nest period often coincides with the physiological changes of menopause: hormonal imbalances cause emotional surges and fatigue. There is also the pressure of career change or unemployment, as well as inability to adapt to new living habits or empty space in the home. Some people also need to care for aging parents. A more common problem is re-learning how to get along with the better half.

Domestic and overseas research suggests that marriage satisfaction has an upside-down U-shaped relationship with the family life cycle: amid the hustle and bustle of child rearing, couples often experience great stress in their relationships, but marriage satisfaction gradually climbs afterwards. Yet once the nest is emptied, satisfaction heads downward again. The infamous "silver divorce" phenomenon in Japan is a manifestation of this kind of psychology.

In Japan, "silver divorce" often strikes life-long housewives. After child-rearing responsibilities have ceased, they yearn to find themselves and become reluctant to wait on their husbands, so they take it upon themselves to file for divorce. But it's a little different in Taiwan.

When children spread their wings and leave the nest, parents can do little more than wish them well and hope that the winds carry them to the sunlit uplands of life.

An end to their marriage?

Ms. Chang, a bank employee, is deeply confounded by her situation. Once her kids were in high school and college, she and her husband would often sit in the same room without saying a word to each other. He would watch TV with a blank expression and a "don't bother me" posture, so she would discreetly withdraw to the bedroom to read, listen to music or fall asleep to avoid the awkward tension between them. And her husband's constant insistence that he too wished to live his own life once the children left home made her realize that she had nothing to rely on in her future. Sadly they had never developed the habit of talking intimately, and now she has no idea where her marriage went wrong.

"Maybe I was always too busy. If it wasn't work, it was the kids. I didn't have any energy left over to care for my husband," says Ms. Chang in measured words. As the threshold of the empty nest draws nearer, will it spell the end of their marriage? She has no answer, and still agonizes over whether to try to salvage their marriage or simply break it off.

Ms. Hu serves in the biotech industry. She's stuck in a different predicament: just when her daughter entered the high school of her choice and she felt she could let go, the health of her parents and parents-in-law started to decline. With other family members living abroad, she had no choice but to take on the burden of caring for four elderly people.

"Every day now my most important task is to check up on them and goad them into staying active. On weekends I take them out, and I think of different ways to keep them amused," she says. At the same time she's struggling with the symptoms of menopause, never having had the chance to relish the leisure time the empty nest affords, instead taking on a heavier burden in life. That is to say, raising children is tough, but where there are children there's life and laughter, a far cry from constantly dealing with the worries and grumpiness of the elderly. This makes her feel glum, and she sees no light at the end of the tunnel.

A father's lament

Many think that empty nests are most hurtful to mothers, especially to housewives who have devoted their lives to bringing up their children. Nevertheless, recent studies show that once they accept that their children are grown and emerge from an initial period of loneliness, mothers usually recognize that their responsibilities are over and they can take joy in rekindling their interests, going back to work, joining clubs, making friends, even going back to school. On the other hand, many fathers feel particularly sad during this stage: they resent that they frittered away their younger years on their careers without spending enough time with their children. Now that they can finally focus more on their kids, they find their kids no longer need them.

US-based writer Liu Yung's essays Wanderlust and Everyone's Crying describe the mood of the empty nest:

"When I was learning science as a child, the textbooks talked about animals migrating to forage for food and search for mates. And I thought, perhaps humans love to travel far to find jobs and look for love. Isn't that right? Children, who at first cling to their parents, suddenly become individuals in their teenage years, no longer staying at their parents' side. Sometimes they even react with a look of disgust when their parents express caring for them. Then they go to college and enter the real world, leaving home and often moving to faraway places for no apparent reason, as if the farther away they are, the better." When faced with the empty nest, fathers feel a great reluctance to part with their children.

A new assignment

For both mothers and fathers, "the ability to appropriately modify one's role is one of the keys to adapting to empty nest life," says Hsieh Hsiu-fen, a Soochow University professor of social work.

If we're not careful, the steps we take to cope might trap us in an emotional abyss fraught with feelings of loss and resentment; or worse, cause what Professor Karen L. Fingerman of Purdue University calls the empty nest "syndrome": depression, missed goals, loss of self-identity, low self-esteem, feelings of abandonment by children and so forth, with the danger of exacerbating any existing mid-life crisis we may already be mired in.

So, how can we weather the feelings of loss during the empty nest period?

"Be considerate to your children and look at things from their perspective"-this is a common recommendation of many experts.

Cheng Yu-ying, part-time professor of social work at Fu Jen Catholic University, points out that when children are growing up-dating, proving their abilities in clubs or schoolwork, starting business ventures-the fear, angst and frustrations in their minds are no less strong than those of their parents. If parents make cold remarks to their children during this period, calling them negligent or unfilial, it will only deepen the children's feelings of guilt and helplessness.

"Such feelings of guilt will make children feel obligated to return home, but they won't feel happy about it, thereby increasing the distance between parent and child." She stresses that spatial separation isn't a problem; it's spiritual closeness that's key.

Parental blame is a repelling force; it only pushes children further away. On the other hand, support and encouragement are always the best attracting forces, keeping families close together.

Cheng notes that even for grown children, parental approval remains a "mental vitamin." Moreover, "With the distance they have from having left home, they're usually more able to express their love." Children still have problems after leaving home, and even if parents can't help them, if they express trust and support instead of nagging and worry, the children will usually grow more confident and perform better.

Lee reminds us, "Parents have to accept that their children might not turn out the way they had expected." If your kid would rather do art than study, chooses to work in a research institute instead of a technology firm, or falls in love with a schoolmate who's significantly older than he is, parents may be disappointed, but they shouldn't interfere. If parents can set clear boundaries, and not encroach on their children's autonomy, such an equal, stress-free relationship will be something your children will be happy to accept.

Toward a new nest

Indeed, the independence of children is the crowning achievement of parents; it means they've succeeded in their responsibility of passing the baton and should have no regrets. In this era plagued with "parasite singles," NEETs (Not currently engaged in Employment, Education or Training), otaku, and teen mothers, parents should be especially grateful that their children have both the ability and the will to leave the nest to fly high and build their own lives.

The kids want to leave the nest / Because they want to build their own. / As long as you and your spouse are together, / The nest is never empty; / The nest has never been empty, / Because the nest belongs to the one who builds it. / Are you an empty nester?

Or a nester?

The above is a poem penned by a blogger named "jitljitl," writing about his own impending empty nest years. In facing his empty nest, perhaps he will experience the nostalgia of an era coming to an end. But life changes like the seasons: as we enter the autumn years of life, relationships with more maturity, feeling and meaning are bound to brew, waiting to form a new beginning for those of us who are willing.