Even housing will change the contours of family life in the later years. Dailey sees living arrangements as the real difference in retirement between baby boomers and their parents.

"The World War II generation had the luxury of saying, 'I'm going to stay in my home until I die,' " she says. "Because baby boomers have used their homes to finance a lifestyle, their home is their biggest savings account right now. They will need that to live in retirement." Varied arrangements for converting a house into a stream of income include reverse mortgages and the transfer of homes among generations.

Divorced women will devise other cooperative living arrangements with family members to stretch their income, Dailey says. They might spend a year with one child, a year with another child, or time with a sister or brother.

Floyd expects baby-boom women – the "superwomen" who have artfully balanced work and home – to be the "reengineering force" helping their generation move into a productive "second adulthood."

As if to illustrate her point, Manheimer notes that in his creative-retirement seminars, men sometimes tell him, "My wife sent me. She says, 'I know what I'm going to do in retirement. You need to know what you're doing.' "

Even that may be changing. A new survey by Merrill Lynch suggests that gender roles will reverse in retirement. Men will be more likely to view this as a time to enhance their relationships, while women will seek more community involvement.

For Floyd, that kind of reaching out – serving on the board of Keep Atlanta Beautiful, registering voters, heading her garden club – has helped to change her earlier negative feelings about retirement. She and her husband keep three calendars to track their activities – a his, hers, and ours approach to scheduling.

For some couples, a break from togetherness includes solo travel. This week Cheryl Disque, a retired special agent for the FBI, is on a safari in Africa. Her husband remains at home in Colorado Springs, Colo. Trips like this feed her "spirit of adventure," she says. They also offer a change of pace from domestic duties – "preparing meals, doing all the dishes, and doing most of the cleaning."

Reengineering can even change stereotypical roles at home. Referring to lunch, that subject of wry humor and mild annoyance among retired wives, Floyd suggests that husbands make their own. "It's empowerment," she says firmly.

Lunch is, in fact, a cliché for a larger issue, says Denise Snodgrass, assistant director of the NC Center for Creative Retirement. "We have our own separate lives in retirement – different goals and routines. One of the key factors of how baby boomers are redefining retirement is taking more control. That's the goal they're looking for."

To Floyd, that goal will help to eliminate what she calls the glass ceiling of retirement – the limited view that causes individuals or couples to settle for predictable routines that may not be satisfying. "People say, 'Oh well, now we'll retire to the golf course.' There should be life beyond the 9th hole. We need to use this second adulthood as an opportunity to find our creativity and share it."