"Why I love having an empty nest."

All the rules. It’s only possible to have kids and work full-time if you set up all the rules.

The wake-ups, the bedtimes, the washing, the cooking, the cleaning, the pick-ups, the drop-offs and later, the curfews.

We love them all so much, those tiny toddlers who turn into teenagers, but sometimes those structures feel like they are killing your soul. Dead. And if the worry doesn’t destroy you, the exhaustion will eat your bones.

Then one day you wake up and they are gone. The kids. The rules. The endless structure. Waiting for the key in the door at 4am.

Yes, it’s true, some women feel sad when their kids are set free. The big sooks.

Me?  I danced nude down our hallway. Then I danced to New York and to Paris with clothes on – because cold.

To be honest, I’m one of the lucky ones. Not one of our children stayed past their 19^th birthday, a clear indictment of my parenting.

They knew that if they planned to live in the family home – and were no longer in the grip of the hideous final years of school – that they would have to be equal partners. Cooking at least once a week, washing their own clothes, replacing the petrol in the car when they’d driven to farflung beaches and back, earn enough money to indulge their love of both kinds of Nudie, earn enough money not to keep asking us for support. I’m demanding like that.

Related: Spending time with the families we choose over Christmas.

Wendy Aronsson writes in her 2014 book, Refeathering the Empty Nest: Life after the Children Leave, one-half of parents are not emotionally prepared for their children to leave home. And she says that in one study, 23 per cent of parents were profoundly unhappy when their kids left home.

That was not me. Here’s why.

I reckon my kids would say that I was – and still am - a truly devoted mother. I nagged enough, teased enough, kissed enough, was on three P&Cs at once, the kind who tried to support them through heartbreaks and hockey grand finals. But being a mother couldn’t define me.

Why? I tried to let it in the early days because that seemed to be the pattern of parenting in Australia in the late eighties. But the first year in the life of our first child was pretty rocky and a counsellor reminded us both that in any relationship, it isn’t just the kids who need attention. Both parents need it too.

Related: 60 May Be The New 40, But Not On The Dating Scene.

Plus work. I always worked. My mother always worked. My eldest was five weeks old when I started back full-time as a reporter on what we then called social issues. If anything ever put my family life in perspective, it was writing about the recession of 1990. We were lucky. We both had jobs. We could pay for child care. But I interviewed so many families who were struggling under financial and emotional burdens.

So why is it great when the kids leave home?

It’s true you never stop feeling some responsibility – but those responsibilities are no longer in the detail. The decisions I make about my time only involve one other person – the demands we make on each other are shared demands. We can choose to sleep in or have noisy sex or dance down the hallway with no clothes on and no-one will say: “Put that away, mum.” Or roll their eyes.

Money.

Maybe there are families out there who always had plenty of money to meet all the needs of kids and still have regular fancy holidays. But that wasn't us. By the time we paid our massive Sydney mortgage, our childcare, our bills and food, there was certainly enough to have long summer holidays near the beach. But during those holidays, we were still cooking and cleaning.

With three kids and their friends, we never had holidays with fewer than eight people at dinner. And there comes a point when the sight of spaghetti bolognaise actually makes you gag.

Try this: Why you should love thy neighbour, from the author of “Eat Pray Love”.

These days, that money is spent on two people visiting Europe for the first time in 25 years. And New York. Yes, made a beeline for fancy hatted restaurants and then posted photos on Facebook of us out the front of Noma. Spent hours and hours in art galleries and museums. And gardens. Somehow our kids never got the hang of gardens. Getting the time back is as good as the money. There is so much more of both when the kids aren’t home.

Do I worry? Do I miss them?

Every Sunday night, we have dinner. They can come – or not come – as they please, bring their  partners or not. Mostly they are all here every Sunday. And they feel enough family to visit their grandmother on a regular basis. We phone, we text. They call us. We call them.

You don’t have to share a house to love them up to the sky. Or for them to love you back. And someone else can worry about that key in the door.

Follow Jenna on Twitter or email jenna_p@bigpond.net.au