Courtesy of Jack Sheard
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jack Sheard. It has been edited for length and clarity.
My now-wife and I started dating toward the end of my senior year in college. She had just turned 21, and I was just shy of 22. After graduation, I got an internship in a different town. We would travel back and forth to see each other.
On one visit, I asked her if she could be pregnant — she had a lot of the symptoms. The next day, she went for a pregnancy test, and it was positive.
Even though it was three months into the relationship, we knew we wanted to be together and have a family.
In order for her and the baby to be covered by my work insurance, we needed to get married, which we did while she was still pregnant. We then moved to Indiana for my first job.
Both of us knew we wanted to have our kids close together, hopeful that one day they would be close friends. So, 20 months after our first was born, our second came along.
During those early years, we hustled to pay for our necessities. At one time between us, we were working five jobs to put food on the table. Both our parents lived too far away to help.
I remember being distracted and very tired. The downside of having kids when you're that young is that you aren't financially stable, so you don't have lots of headspace to play and explore because you're thinking about how to provide for your family.
None of our close friends had young kids. There was no one to get advice from or bounce ideas off because no one had done it before. We often didn't know what we were doing.
One of my biggest regrets is not letting my kids fail. I wanted to protect them from failure so much that I would give them Lego kits but build them myself. Even though I regret that part of my parenting, I also had no one to suggest there was another way.
Pixar movies and video games were often on, just so my wife and I could catch our breath.
As the kids grew into teenagers, our parenting changed, but it remained hands-on. My wife and I were really involved in whatever activities they took on, and we were constant taxi drivers taking them where they needed to go.
My eldest entered the military in 2019, my youngest went to college a few years after.
Before my youngest moved out, people asked me if I was scared to be an empty nester. Maybe the right answer would have included talking about how sad I was going to be, but actually, my wife and I were looking forward to it.
We had only been together a little over a year before becoming parents. There was so much that we were looking forward to doing without the daily responsibilities that come with parenting children.
My wife was looking forward to training for ultra marathons, and I couldn't wait to play golf. We were excited to finally get the chance to travel together, but we also loved the idea of chilling, of doing absolutely nothing but relaxing.
After about a year of being just the two of us, my youngest son moved back home for over a year. I had to remember to close the doors and get dressed again.
When he moved back in, we didn't revert to the parents we were when he was a child. He was independent, living in the basement and paying rent. While we told him he could always live with us when he needed to, we also told him he needed to have a plan to move out. We were hospitable, but not overly hospitable because we want both our kids to make their own way in the world.
Even though I tried to protect them from failure as children, I've backed off a lot as they have become adults. I think they're better off without constant guidance from a parent. They know that if they fail, we're here to help and support them. It takes the fear out of failure, I think.
Somehow, my wife and I made it all work. We raised pretty good humans. After all our hustling at such a young age, we're now just enjoying life. We have a nice house in a nice neighborhood, with a nice car. We have nice things and go on nice trips.
The greatest thing about being an empty nester in your 40s is that we're not even retired, and we're already enjoying life. We put in our time, and now we have so many options of how to spend our time, free from the responsibility of raising little kids.
