On Sundays my mother doesn’t always go to church, and she doesn’t whip up hearty breakfasts for my father. This day is reserved for someone else. On Sundays, she smiles, puts on her lipstick, and glides dutifully into the assisted living home nearby. As she enters, the older adults in the living room slowly look up. Something new is breaking up the quiet of their day. A door has opened, someone has entered and sunlight has filled the room. Mom spots her 87-year old mother, who sits silently dazing ahead, failing to recognize her daughter. And then what my mother has known for so long hits her all over again: she is now the caregiver, my grandmother the child.

In my last blog, I discussed a big issue boomers are tackling: caregiving. The boomer caregiver may think she is “Wonder Woman” (or “Wonder Man”), flying a glass jet to her next vital destination, when she realizes that the craft she is on is beginning to lose steam. An oxygen mask has been deployed—does she take it? Too often she does not.

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Financial planners will find it heartening to know that now more than ever before, there exists vast opportunities to market their “planning wares” before the boomer demographic. Why? A recent survey by Nationwide Financial reveals some answers.

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We’re always telling clients, prospects and anyone listening that boomers live by life stage as much as actual birthdays. So true. Two weeks ago I visited a cousin who is several years younger than me and much as I love her, I wouldn’t want to live her life. Her life includes early bird dinners, constant telephone conversations, shopping at the condo boutique and … designating herself as her mother’s personal caregiver, climaxing a life long difficult relationship with anger fed martyrdom.

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The headline in Thursday, March 11’s USA Today is destined to send a chill down any civilized American’s spine…and is increasingly typical of the rhetoric around the healthcare debate. It reads: “Benefits for seniors eating up kids’ share.”

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We talk a lot about how there is no such thing as “the boomer woman.” That said, I’ve been with two very different slices of the demographic this past couple of weeks, and if my eyes were closed, I wouldn’t have known which was which.

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Every year and a half or so, from age 35 on, I got to talk to and about whatever boomers were going through in their lives in the public spotlight. My primary communications vehicle was books—15 of them, most written in the self-help genre. Work/life balance issues? I was there. Last child leaving the nest? Call on me. Caregiving an elderly parent? I’m your gal.

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Here’s the premise. Take about a dozen boomers from around the same economic and education level, all married, grown children, mid-to-late fifties, and put them in the same neighborhood. Give them each about 50K to spend. Let them decide whether to spend it on savings, fun cruises or long-term care insurance. That is the first elimination round. Only those who put it into long-term care insurance get to continue.

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For many boomer daughters, just as their adult children begin to leave the nest, they are greeted with new demands—the need to find care and support for an aging parent. Navigating the maze of services for older adults (and tackling the patchwork of expenses) is no easy task.

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