Many parents have demonstrated a desire to parent skillfully and artfully. They read the latest child development and parenting books, configure their schedules to accommodate the social and educational lives of their children, and focus like lasers on their childrens' well-being. Many have made an enormous emotional and financial investment in raising their children. But children grow up, they move out, they create their own lives and their own homes. The role of the parent changes, diminishes, and evolves. The life phase that begins in preparation for an "empty nest" and continues until parents re-feather the nest has no official name, yet it represents a profound shift from the rigors of daily parenting to a period of self-reflection and reorientation. Here, Wendy Aronsson centers on that experience, capturing the realities of the emotions and life changes that come on gradually, and sometimes proceed in fits and starts.
