Leaving the Family Home

Original version

BBC Radio 4 FM

BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

BBC Radio 4

Radio 4

Radio 4 (FM)

BBC Radio 4 LW

Documentaries

Factual: Life Stories

BBC Radio 4 - Leaving the Family Home

Geoff Bird charts the sadness and excitement of children growing up and flying the nest.

Geoff Bird follows the final few weeks of his daughter's time at home before heading off to Uni, speaking with friends and family about the impact this rite of passage can have.

Following on from 'Packing Up The Family Home' in which Geoff Bird and his siblings cleared and sold their parents' house, he now sets out to chart the emotional rupture that comes when your own children grow up and leave. 

When Geoff and his wife Sarah's eldest daughter left, they were in part unprepared for the extent of the impact it would have, blind-sided by the excitement of her heading off to fulfil her potential and begin her new life. 

Now their next daughter Tilly is on her way too, Geoff speaks with friends and family about their own experience of flying the nest to try and unpick this complicated and profound rite of passage. He argues that the reason it is given relatively little attention speaks to the way we continue to undervalue the domestic space, and hears from Frank Cottrell Boyce and his mum as they share recollections of the time Frank left for Oxford University - "You'll hear songs about heartbreak but there's nothing about when your kids go. You have these massive aspirations for them - and what is aspiration but pushing someone away, beyond you, and that feeling they won't come back."

Produced by Geoff Bird

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Leaving the Family Home

Genres

Formats

BBC Radio 4 FM

About BBC Radio 4