Indian couples' narratives of the empty nest experience

Abstract

The goal of this study was to explore the narratives of three Indian couples who experienced the empty nest phenomenon. The participants were selected from the predominant Indian community of Laudium (Centurion), which is west of Pretoria, South Africa. The participants were between 50 to 70 years of age. The research was conducted within the narrative metaphor. The researcher conducted unstructured interviews with the participants, transcribed the material, and analyzed the narratives by means of the “Three-dimensional Space Approach”. The narratives of the Indian couples revealed that the empty nest event created ramifications in various other areas of all the participants’ lives, as they experienced a transition from being parents before the empty nest, to being parents after the empty nest. The research was conducted within the guidelines of the Postgraduate and Ethics Committees of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Pretoria, South Africa