Unfortunately, there are many in such a state, and they DO have kids, but those kids are... not helping.
That's a whole other kettle of fish...I'll say this though: maintaining a close family unit is hard work just like anything else worth doing. We ALL screw it up sometimes, but with honesty, humility, and love, we hope we can fix what we mess up. Some folks don't and they pay for it dearly.
My wife is a social worker and I hear about it constantly. When you see kids that take off and don't come back to help, usually there's a reason that things went down that way. On the other end of the spectrum of screwed-upness, you see the ones who never leave home and STILL don't do anything to help. You've got a 60 year old loser kid living with their 80 year old dying parent and the parent is still making them 3 meals a day! My wife has to stage interventions for this kind of crap all the time. Boggles the mind. But the parents are just as responsible for things getting that way (maybe more so) as the kids are.
My Mom is in memory care; I visit every day & see in the dining room the victims of “dump and run” as practiced by their sorry offspring whom they seldom see.
Wife & I have no children, but two `goddaughters’, children of her best friend.
We’ll soon be 70. The one who dies first is the lucky one for not dying alone. Them’s the breaks.