Interpersonal Communication- A Mindful Approach to Relationships, 2020a

traditional workday tends to be somewhat more flexible for these parents/guardians, but their evenings
and weekends are often filled with family functions. As children grow older, parental oversight and
direction become less necessary, but children also start taking on their own busy lives and schedules that
often conflict with their parents/guardians’ lives and schedules.
In full nest three, the couple’s children are older and more and more independent; however, they are
still somewhat dependent upon their families for food and shelter. As children try to increasingly demand
their own identities apart from their parents/guardians, parent/guardian-child relationships are often
fraught with various degrees of conflict. On the one hand, you have parents/guardians who have been in
a parental oversight role for many years, and on the other, you have children who are seeking their own
independence and autonomy. Finding the balance between these polarizing forces is often easier said
than done for many families.
The next stage is empty nest one, which happens once children are launched, but the parents/guardians
are still working. The occurs when late adolescents leave the parental home and
venture out into the world as young singles themselves. Historically, late adolescents started the launching
stage when they exited the home and went off to college.
However, it’s possible that going to college is only a partial-launch. In today’s world, many adolescents
go off to college and then after college find it almost impossible to function in many large cities on
a single salary, so they end up back at home living with their parents/guardians. At the same time,
adolescents seek to achieve economic security, but some find it impossible to do so, depending on what’s
going on within our economy. For example, after the economic downturn of 2008, many recent college
graduates had a tough time finding entry-level jobs because they were competing against people with
decades of experience who had lost their jobs and desperately needed work (even entry-level work). As
I’m writing this, we’re seeing the same problem once again as a result of the 2020 Panedmic.
As I’m writing this sentence, we’re just at the beginning of the global economic disaster stemming
from the COVID-19 outbreak of 2019-2020. Many experts are predicting that we could be looking at a
period of economic unease not seen since the Great Depression started in 1929. If this economy does
dive into a depression, we’ll see more and more late adolescents forced to live longer and longer with
their parents/guardians out of economic necessity. Although it was simply too early, in March 2020, to tell
what would happen, experts predicted that 80 million jobs are at moderate to high risk of disappearing
(more than half the jobs in the U.S. today). 41 By the height of the first wave, around 31 Million U.S.
Citizens were filing for unemployment as a result of COVID-19. 42
Eventually, most parents/guardians will experience a period when their adult children have launched,
and the parents/guardians, themselves, are still working.
Empty nest two occurs once both parents/guardians have decided to retire. Now, retirement is one of
those options that may not be viable for everyone, so some couples never end up in empty nest two as a
necessity. Other couples spend almost the last third of their lives in retirement. In many ways, couples in
retirement have a lot of the same flexibility they had when they were young couples.
Interpersonal Communication 384