The period that was formerly known as the empty-nest years is now seen by many parents as a time of opportunity, writes Fionola Meredith.

For nearly 20 exhausting and exhilarating years, you've nurtured her, wrapped her tenderly in a cocoon of maternal love and protection. Now she's leaving home, and that symbiotic mother-child relationship must end. But as she revels in the heady delights of independence, are you left feeling cast aside, deposed from the role that has shaped and defined you for decades? Or are you rubbing your hands with anticipation, relishing the space and freedom to begin a new, exciting phase of your life?

As hundreds of youngsters depart for university for the first time, it's often reported that mothers are overwhelmed by feelings of redundancy, emptiness and depression: the symptoms of so-called "empty-nest syndrome".

But Prof Sheila Greene of Trinity College Dublin, who writes about the psychology of women, says that the idea of broken-hearted mothers drifting aimlessly through echoing rooms is an outmoded one. "The term 'empty-nest syndrome' was first coined decades ago, at a time when women devoted their entire lives to their children. Social changes mean that many women now work outside the home, and aren't expected to centre their lives 100 per cent on their kids. And they don't expect to be old at 50 either. So the time when children leave home doesn't have to be distressing."

American psychologist Karne Fingerman, author of Mothers and Their Daughters: Mixed Emotions, Enduring Bonds, agrees. "The empty-nest syndrome doesn't exist in the way it has been portrayed in the popular literature.

"People do miss their children, but, based on what I've seen in my research, what happens is actually the opposite of the empty-nest syndrome." According to Fingerman, most parents enjoy greater freedom to pursue their own goals and interests once their children leave home. And far from reporting feelings of grief and loss, parents say that seeing a child start down the path toward successful adulthood gives them a feeling of joy and pride. Most significantly, the parent/child relationship actually improves for many of them when children leave home - perhaps because of the absence of day-to-day stresses that come with living together.

As the feminist critic Adrienne Rich notes, "motherhood, in the sense of an intense relationship with a particular child, or children, is one part of female process; it is not an identity for all time".

Reflecting on her own experiences, Beth Fitzpatrick, a relationship counsellor from Dublin, believes that women should use the period when children leave home to nurture their own needs - perhaps for the first time. She says, "I'm 52, and I've reared four children. It's my turn now. There's no point sitting around feeling hard done by because the children are caught up in their own lives. If you do that, you'll be stuck until you're 80 complaining that they never come to see you. And think of the benefits - you won't be disturbed by teenagers stumbling in at 2am any more. I've decided to be selfish - I've earned it."

But no matter how prepared parents are for their child leaving home, the actual moment of departure can be difficult. Mary Farnan, a teacher from Belfast, waved her 18-year-old daughter off to university last week. "You just know that things won't be the same again. And it's a reminder that time is passing, that you are getting older as well. It does bring a tear to your eye."

That sense of finality, of a treasured chapter in life closing forever, affected mature student Susan Skinner when she travelled to Canterbury to help her son settle in to student accommodation. "I just burst into tears. This precious child that I'd put everything into - how could I leave him behind in an old run-down house? That moment of cutting the tie, walking away - that's when it hits you, this is it, he's on his own now."

Of course, it's not just mothers who struggle with conflicting emotions when their children fly the nest. In fact, research suggests that many fathers find the transition particularly challenging. A recent study by psychologist Helen DeVries found that mothers and fathers anticipate and experience their children's departures very differently. While most of the women in the study had started planning for the next stage in their lives, the men in DeVries's sample didn't talk at all about preparing for the change. They did not see their children leaving home as a major transition and were less prepared for the emotional upheaval of their departure. As a result, many fathers expressed regret that they had not played a greater role in their children's lives before they left home.

Some parents discover that the nest isn't emptying quite as quickly as they expected. Sheila Greene says the phenomenon of extended entry into adulthood means that some children are staying in the family home well into their 20s. "Prohibitive property prices mean that kids are hanging around for much longer, cluttering up the house. They're actually preventing parents from enjoying their own freedom. In fact, they really need to be kicked out of the nest," she says.

Pip Jaffa, chief executive of the Northern Ireland Parents Advice Centre, says that problems can arise when children have left home to attend university but return after graduation. "They've had a flavour of independence, and they've changed in many ways - but the parents haven't. And when you have an adult in the house with disposable income but who doesn't contribute financially, that can bring a lot of stress and strain to the family." Once the children have finally gone, parents are confronted with the - sometimes uncomfortable - reality of their own relationship. Without the shared focus of parenting, couples can find that they have little left in common. Alice Ryerson vividly evokes that sense of absence in her poem In Bed: "Discontinuous we lie with an old cat asleep between our backs/where jealous children used to squirm wedged in between us."

Lisa O'Hara of Marriage and Relationship Counselling Services (MRCS) in Dublin says, "When a couple get married and have a family, they become deeply caught up in the roles that they play. That changes when children leave home. Often, the mother is looking to develop her life in new directions at the very moment that the father is wanting to slow down. We often see people coming in with these issues - and some couples do decide to separate as a result of them."

It's not surprising, says Philip Hodson, of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. "If you change the dynamic shape of a family, a number of other things change in consequence. But the timing is unfortunate - when children leave home for the first time, they really need their parents to be together more than ever." Adrienne Rich says, "It is not enough to let our children go, we need selves of our own to return to."

Far from sinking feebly into the rocking-chair, it seems that many mothers are enjoying the autonomy the empty nest brings - just as much as their newly-fledged sons and daughters are relishing their own independence.