I think in some circumstances kids may have to help but with so many on this thread saying they help and on other threads I wonder how much is just enabling the parents to keep living the lifestyle they want but can't afford. If people can't afford to live in their homes then they need to realize that and sell to free up some of the $ or maybe doing a reverse mortgage depending on how old they are. It does not seem fair to me to burden your kids with your problems. There are always solutions that don't involve other people giving you $.
There is definitely some truth to this in our situation. I guess it is a trade off between enabling a life that will still allow some pleasures, or allowing the person to sink into a situation that you know will make them even LESS functional. It can be hard to relate if you are wired differently, but there are in fact people who are NOT motivated to change by bad consequences, but instead react with even more denial, passivity, shame, and helplessness. My mother got into her situation due to multiple factors, some in her control and some not. By the time we stepped in, she had been in a slow spiral for about 15 years, during which I was constantly worried about her situation. Her misery and anxiety, her lack of money, her lack of health care, etc., created stress for me regardless of whether she was responsible (which she partly was) and regardless of how private about it she tried to be. She was in her early 60s with no house, no assets, some debt, a barely functional car, and a low paying job with no benefits or health insurance. We could have just let her go on government assistance, and at some point in the future, we very well might have to do so. However, at the time, I just wanted to get her into a stable, low-stress environment where I could maintain some control without completely taking over her day to day life.
Despite my resentment about this difficult and undesirable situation, I still love her and want her to have a little joy in life. I would prefer not to make her live in a situation that I know will make her more depressed, if I can reasonably avoid it. So we made the choice we did with the financial options we had at the time. If we were facing the same situation now, a number of years on, we might try to do it differently. I guess that although she might karmic-ally deserve to suffer the true consequences of a lot of her mistakes, it would just be a little too hard for me to stand by and watch it.
There is a lot of psychological complexity to these situations (which also tend to have huge ripple effects across entire networks of family/friends), and those complexities play large roles in decision making. It's not a matter of just $ to consider in all cases, IMO.