You make a good point. I would also mention that “back in the day”, for the most part at least, not as many women worked outside of the home and so some had the time to take care of their infirmed elderly parents, but that’s not to say that this was an easy job.
My mother’s aunt’s husband suffered an on the job injury that left him paralyzed below the waste and later he suffered a debilitating stroke and was cared for at home until he died at around the age of 45.
Back then there was no worker’s comp or insurance or Medicare or SSA, in home therapy, but my great aunt managed to take care of him and their two young boys with the help of my grandmother and my mother who lived with her after my grandfather died at an early age (40 something) from a sudden massive heart attack. But my great aunt ended up going to work full time as a bookkeeper just to make ends meet for this extended household. And my grandmother took in laundry and cleaned houses for their more well off neighbors while helping to care for her BIL and the kids. My mother dropped out of high school in the 11th grade to get a job in a candy store because during the depression, a job was hard to come by and very much needed and more important than a high school diploma.
As a little kid, I remember my great aunt Serene was one tough cookie, loving and kind but very tough, she a very tough outer shell, a rather stern personality sometimes¸ but then she needed one to get through those very tough times.
My grandmother, on the other hand, lived independently into her late 70s. She was a very strong and very difficult woman. She lost most of her eyesight due to macular degeneration in her 80s. I'm sure her 60 year chain smoking habit didn't help. As she entered her 90s my father and aunt sent her into a nursing home because she developed dementia and needed round the clock care.
It would have been physically impossible for her 70 year old “children”, who had their own health problems, to take care of their mother.