Particularly in D&D, I bypass this by doing two things.

First, I try to downplay the idea of adventurers as a special class of citizen. Sure, you may get the occasional idle rich who does this stuff for the thrill. For the most part, though, I like to give downtime and assume that the PCs would rather have normal, stable lives. But sometimes trouble brews, and that's when certain people realize that someone has to do something, and they have to be those someones. Because frankly, if you're going to be a professional adventurer who starts your career meeting other professional adventurers in a tavern, any effort you spend on backstory is probably wasted.

Second, due to aforementioned downtime, I like to give players narrative control over some of their background elements. Sometimes it's family. (Be it parents, siblings, spouse, or children.) Sometimes it's a legacy. But let them feel ownsership of something bigger than their character sheet. Make sure to encourage this by not attacking whatever bonds they focus on. But once the player feels a sense of ownership of something bigger in the campaign world, they're more likely to want ties.

(And to repeat on point two. If you punish PCs for having ties, don't be surprised if the players learn from that.)