ALEXANDRA SHULMAN'S NOTEBOOK: Watch out, Gwynnie! A boomerang's set to hit you By ALEXANDRA SHULMAN FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY Published: 23:18, 1 February 2025 | Updated: 23:29, 1 February 2025 e-mail 1 View comments What better way to deal with the empty-nest stage of life than to do as Gwyneth Paltrow has done, and move house? Having sold her £18 million family home in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles , she and her husband are moving to what in LA terms counts as their country house in Montecito. OK, not everyone is going to have a bigger place to play with, like Gwyneth, but many parents feel like chucking the cards in the air and watch them come down in a different pattern when their children leave home. Several people I know have sold up in town and decided to base themselves among the fields and babbling brooks with their dogs.
It's a nice idea. But guess what? Those grown-up kids who made us feel miserable as we helped to haul all their belongings out of the house for a new life have an uncanny habit of moving back in. The idea of children actually leaving the nest, rather than having a quick flutter outside and returning, is truly only for the birds.
Ask any middle-class parent of twentysomethings whether the end of university and, hopefully, the start of first jobs means they will have no need of their old bed, and you will be met with a Gen Z-style eye-roll – but from the parents. My own 29-year-old is currently living (or should I say staying) with us. Each time h.
