empty nester

n. Informal
A parent whose children have grown and left home.

Couple whose children have established separate households. Empty nesters form an important segment of the housing market, since they often seek to reduce the amount of housing space they occupy and are thus one source of demand for smaller housing units.

A couple whose children have established separate households; important segment of the housing market, since empty nesters often seek to reduce the amount of housing space they occupy. Thus empty nesters are one source of demand for smaller housing units.
Example: The Etons have raised 2 children, who are now grown and have families of their own. As empty nesters, the Etons no longer have need for the big 4-bedroom home they occupy. They purchase a 2-bedroom Town House which provides all the space they require.

The home of parents whose children have grown up and moved out. For example, Now that they had an empty nest, Jim and Jane opened a bed-and-breakfast. This expression, alluding to a nest from which baby birds have flown, gave rise to such related ones as empty-nester, for a parent whose children had moved out, and empty-nest syndrome, for the state of mind of parents whose children had left. [c. 1970]

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The stage in a family's cycle when the children have grown up and left home to begin their own adult lives.

For parents, the empty nest sometimes results in midlife anxiety.