MIAMI - It's been a few weeks since you moved out of your parents' house, and you're worried about them. They're empty nesters now, probably bored and lonely, and you're thinking about paying them a visit.

Better call first. They may be busy.

Despite popular belief, the empty nest -- that stage in life when grown children fly the coop -- doesn't always signal a distressing time for parents. Hardly. As they send the kids off to college, jobs or significant others, more and more parents report that being without their offspring is a positive experience, one that is sometimes a long time in coming.

"This is something we've been actually looking forward to," says Gladstone Wilkins of Pembroke Pines, whose daughter went off to college last month. "It's time for them to be independent. And it's time for us to be a little more relaxed and travel around."

Like Wilkins and wife Jennifer, many parents newly liberated from having children at home have plans -- maybe travel, hobbies, studies, or even, ahem, romantic encounters outside the bedroom.

Carmen Ellman is spending more hours at her business, CNC & Associates, which does drug and alcohol testing for companies, while daughter Lauren is away at school. Husband Ken is watching more New York Yankees games and hitting the gym more frequently.

The Ellmans say they miss their only child, but they also recognize it's time to stand back and watch her take flight. "I really miss going out shopping and having lunch with her, but now I can also put in more time at work and devote myself to that," Carmen says.

Observes Lauren, who started at the University of Central Florida this summer: "They've been training to get used to me going for months. They were pretty much ready."

Of course, separating takes some emotional adjustment, regardless of whether the grown child is 18 or 24. When, for instance, Maria Elena de Yarza's youngest daughter, Mimi, told her she was moving to Baton Rouge, La., to be close to her boyfriend, the Miami teacher thought her heart would crack in two.

"I said, 'I'm happy for you. He's a great guy,'" recalls de Yarza, who lives in Westchester, Fla. 'But inside I was thinking, 'Boy, am I going to miss you!'"

New freedom

That was back in June. But now de Yarza has discovered that, after an initial period of adjustment, being an empty nester carries its own sweet freedoms. Though she still worries about her 25-year-old daughter, she is also free to relax and enjoy herself. On her to-do list: spending more time with her two granddaughters.

When J.C. Hernandez's youngest daughter, Jessica, moved out last September, he turned to wife Pamela and said "Hallelujah!"

"We were ecstatic," he said. "No offense to our children, but now we go out, we stay out late, we travel. We feel like teenagers again."

New research shows that most parents adapt well to their new, childless life. In a study published earlier this year in the Journal of Family Issues, Christine Proulx found that the so-called empty nest syndrome didn't match the widely held notion of parents bereft by separation. Most actually reported improved relationships with their children.

"Some of the parents went into the experience not knowing what to expect," says Proulx, a professor of human development and family studies at the University of Missouri. "But they were pleasantly surprised. We think that empty nest syndrome is more of a myth. It's an attractive term that caught on but had no basis in reality."

Other university studies confirm that the depression and crisis of identity that parents expect to feel aren't usually the norm. A 2000 study published in the Journals of Gerontology, for example, reported that young women and their mothers were almost always positive about their relationships after the daughters had moved out. Another long-term study found that empty nesters renewed ties with other family members that may have weakened during the earlier child-centered years.

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