Even if you don't go to that extreme, you look back only a few generations and even today at immigrants, and you see that the old people never stop working until they're literally bed-ridden.

They might not have GDP-increasing jobs that show up on balance sheets, but grandma watches the kids (effectively working as daycare, off-books), grandpa fixes things, and so on.

By demanding everything be reduced to the nuclear family (or smaller) we've created an unnatural situation on never seen before on a global scale.