That's false compassion. What you're effectively arguing is for those people to increase their family's exposure in a last-ditch attempt to save their business (and probably still lose it anyway), rather than directly addressing the economic problems facing them.

The cognitive dissonance comes about because it's not very American to expect or ask for help. Even though we're mainly in this position because the government itself mismanaged economic policy for decades, resulting in us being collectively overleveraged.