NEW YORK — Celebrities’ children are taking flight, and a number of high-profile parents are navigating the complex emotions that come with sending kids off to college for the first time.

Jessica Alba, Jamie Lynn Spears, Jennifer Lopez and other famous folks have joined the ranks of quasi-empty nesters, opening up about the bittersweet nature of it all.

Sending her oldest daughter, Honor Warren, off to Yale University has been intense, Alba told People recently, though she admitted she hasn’t yet felt the brunt of it.

“It hasn’t really hit me personally, but I think for any parent, just that milestone, it’s intense,” Alba told the magazine. “I don’t think you can prepare for it. You just have to tackle it when it happens.”

The milestone hit especially keenly for Jamie Lynn Spears, having nearly lost her eldest daughter, Maddie, to an ATV accident 10 years ago. Now she is setting up her dorm room at the University of Southern Mississippi.

“I’m so proud of her and everything she’s done, but I also cry in the car because I’m not going to have my baby home every day,” Spears told People in June. “She’s always going to be my baby.”

Jennifer Lopez has been mentally preparing since early summer to send 18-year-old Max and Emme, her twins with ex Marc Anthony, to college. The reality hit her as she penned some words for their high school graduation ceremony’s program, she told Andy Cohen on “Watch What Happens Live” in June.

“Every time it comes up I just start crying,” Lopez said. “I could cry right now.”

Halle Berry got a taste of that moment last summer when her daughter, Nahla Ariela, spent the summer away at a college program, though she had a matter-of-fact attitude.

“I am not one of these moms that feels like, ‘oh, she is leaving,’” the Oscar-winning actress told Jenna Bush Hager in June 2025. “Yes, will I worry? Of course. Am I excited for her to start her life and figure out who she is going to be? Absolutely. I am dying to see who she is going to be and what she will discover.”

Berry kept front and center the understanding that “that’s our job, right, to get them ready to fly the nest, not stay home. We want them to be independent.” She oozed nothing but pride a few months later, when Nahla gained early acceptance to her top college pick in October.

The separation doesn’t get any easier after freshman year, Joanna Gaines attested recently on Instagram as she and husband Chip Gaines sent the older two of their four children off for their senior and sophomore years of college.

“Thinking of all the parents sending their kids off to college this season,” the “Fixer Upper” star wrote. “I’ve been on that side of move-in day, so I know the wide range of emotions well.”

Everyone from Brooke Shields, to former first lady Michelle Obama, to Katie Holmes and numerous other celebrity parents have recounted that emotional seasaw. Gaines assured weepy parents that those feelings are counterbalanced by watching your children thrive.

“As hard as that goodbye is, there’s nothing more fulfilling than watching your kid grow beyond you — it’s one of the greatest gifts of being a parent,” Gaines wrote. “May you find joy, comfort, and gratitude in the letting go.”

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