My focus here is mostly on the intense five- or ten-year period when all of these changes take place. I’ll offer women examples of how to be thrivers and survivors, rather than stuck and out of luck. Thrivers and survivors embrace life’s many changes, not just biological ones, like menopause, but those that are psychological, like giving up the fulltime mother role and replacing it with something equally exciting and rewarding.

Perhaps most important, however, this book is not about how children change as they are launched. And it is not about fathers, either. It is about the mothers who are initiating the launch countdown. It is about the women who emerge on the other side of motherhood, while also propelling themselves into motherhood’s second half. The feeling is remarkably similar to breaking from our own parents, only now it’s the mirror image. It is a time of intense self-reflection, selfexamination, and a new setting of priorities. It is a time for undoing regrets, for exploring all possible selves, for finding hidden identities that have been squelched under the enormous pressure of Being Mom.

Fathers deal with their own sense of loss when their children leave home, but theirs is a different story, and one that I am not going to touch upon here. Quite frankly, the issue often matters more to mothers, and they are more likely to experience some anguish and soul-searching about what happens next. I would guess, however, that much of what I say here will apply to fathers, especially those who had primary responsibility for child rearing.

For most women, the MotherLaunch stage is triggered when children leave home. That’s when the mother mode is in the “off ” position, and the “me” mode is turned back on. Millions of baby-boom mothers have devoted enormous energy and affection and attention to their children for at least eighteen years. And, although it shouldn’t come as a surprise to them, many are completely unprepared for what comes next, for defining themselves as someone who is other than mother.

How will mothers adjust to having no children at home? How will we fill our time, and our hearts? How will we manage to have adult children who are, nevertheless, still dependent? How will we cope with having adult children who sometimes disappoint or hurt or irritate us?

These are questions for all empty-nest mothers, and they are also my own. But just because our children are gone doesn’t mean we’ve vanished from our parenting lives in a puff of smoke. Actually, many of us are stealth parents, because we are in disguise. We still live in the childcentric neighborhoods and towns in which we raised our children, only our children aren’t home anymore. We look pretty much like everybody else, maybe a little worn around the edges, but we certainly haven’t turned into graying grannies rocking on our front porches. Actually, we could probably pass as mothers of school-age children, because so many other boomers postponed having children into their thirties and forties.

And even after our children leave home, they tend to come back, usually several times. Mine, for instance, have returned temporarily. They were gone while I wrote most of this book, but now they’re home again, and I’m juggling the needs of two almost-adult children.

Both of my children are in college, but it’s summer now, so they are both back home. My son returned from his freshman year in May, and it took him almost four weeks to find a job. Finally, he was hired as a busboy at a snooty country club a few towns away. He was working six days a week, for low wages and to the point of exhaustion. But five weeks later, he was fired. So he’s home again.

My daughter has been studying in the Dominican Republic and Argentina for a year, but now she’s back home for a few weeks, trying to catch up on a year’s worth of sleep deprivation. At the end of the summer, she will need a ride back to school, three hundred miles south, to move into an unfurnished apartment in Washington, D.C. The same week, my son will need a ride back to school, three hundred miles north, to Boston.

Finally, in September, my husband and I will be on our own again, along with our dog, Kippy. In case you haven’t noticed, the process of emptying the nest of children takes years. In fact, it’s like a five- or seven-year labor and delivery period. The children leave and return, leave and return, many times over. Eventually, the yo-yoing of the empty nest, full nest, empty nest, full nest will be over, but there’s no way of knowing in advance how long that process will take.

That’s why this time of life requires a whole new way of thinking about ourselves, as mothers, as wives, and as women. We have to unthink our sense of ourselves as full-time mothers and rethink ourselves as other than mothers, as postmothers.

This is actually much easier to do than it may first appear. I discovered this, and much more, in the original research I conducted for this book, a Web survey answered by one thousand women across the country who told me exactly how they felt when their children left home. I interviewed many by telephone, and dozens more in person. Once I overcame their compulsion to talk about their grown children instead of themselves, I found I had hit a mother lode of motherhood information. They love their children, they will always think of themselves as mothers, but now they want more. And they are discovering what that “more” is.

I also interviewed many experts by telephone—psychologists, sociologists, doctors, and economists—who are at the forefront of research on issues related to midlife. In this way, my discussions helped to expand on and enrich the statistics and conclusions in their published research papers.

The stories I tell, and the women I quote, are drawn from personal interviews and Web survey responses. They are all real, although I have changed all of their names and most of the identifying details to ensure the anonymity of my sources.

Among the hundreds of women I have interviewed, most return to a recurring theme about this stage of a woman’s life. It is this: the postmotherhood life is not only not so bad, it’s actually wonderful. If these moms had a theme song, it might be “Leave Already” or maybe “Change the Locks, I Want Some Privacy.” My research shows that the so-called empty-nest syndrome, in which mothers become miserable and maladjusted when children leave, just doesn’t exist. Our own mothers, the neighbors, and even some so-called experts expect us to fall apart when our last child leaves home.

But guess what? For many, many mothers, the postparenthood phase is simply and absolutely fabulous. That theme was reflected in my “Name This Book” contest, which I held to search for the best book title among those who answered my survey or visited my Web site, www.drcarin.com. (I continue to collect data, and I invite you to take my Web survey.) The results were sometimes humorous, often poignant, and always quite telling.

Mary, from Syracuse, New York, for example, suggested Motherhood Rocked, Now Me-Hood Rules, which is not half bad. She also offered My Journey from Motherhood to Me-Hood and It’s Okay to Be Happy They’re Gone.

Emie, from Chappaqua, New York, suggested When Mothers Spread Their Wings, which has a nice ring to it, but sounds as if it would be a primer on postdeath behavior.

Linda of Long Island, in New York, sent in a list of twelve possibilities, including, oddly, Is This the Face of a Stupid Person? I have no idea what that book would be about, but I love the sassy attitude. Sybil, a therapist in Rockville, Maryland, gave a long and not quite lucid explanation for her proposal, Song of Motherhood: The Remix.

One father even offered Cutting the Cord and Mom’s Separation Anxiety. His wife could be having issues, unless, of course, he’s projecting! A few women focused on the negative, including the one who suggested that this book should be called A Hole in My Heart, and another who threw out Life in the Lonely Lane, but they were definitely in the minority.

My sister, Joann, suggested Grown, Flown, Alone, which has a nice ring to it, and she even used Photoshop to insert the title atop a picture of a slightly ratty, vacant bird’s nest.

A few of my other favorites, in no particular order: Mothership, Stage Two, Mom in Late Bloom, M-Other, Loving Life at Fifty and After, The Nest Is Empty: Did the Egg Crack or Did I? Waves of Sorrow, Ripples of Joy, Flapping My Wings Again, and Free at Last.

The reality is that, as mothers, we have practiced for this moment for years, in saying hundreds of little good-byes to our children: when they left home to go to nursery school or kindergarten, when they left home to ride bikes or go on playdates, when they left home to drive, when they left home to spend time with friends. Once they leave for college, we can speak by cell phone, e-mail them, and instant-message them, but it’s not the same. At this point, our time with our children is brief, and the good-byes are longer and more definitive. Most of them have already left home, emotionally if not physically, and they are all too eager to grow up and away from us.

Still, happy good-byes are what most of us want for our children. We want to send them out into the world, confident and secure and joyful. We’re all in the business of parenting to work ourselves out of a job.

For more information on empty nests, visit www.drcarin.com.

Excerpted from “Beyond the Mommy Years” by Carin Rubenstein, PhD. Copyright 2007 by Carin Rubenstein, PhD. Used by arrangement with Springboard Press, an imprint of Grand Central Publishing. All rights reserved.

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