There is nothing extreme about it.
The Jedi were allowed to have a family, which is for a lot of them, the Order. Most of them think of their master or their padawan as the closest people to them, and even Dooku, even after everything he did, still compares the way he sees Obi-Wan to a grandson of sorts in the ROTS novelisation.
More recently and undoubtedly canon now, Obi-Wan refers to the Jedi as his family in Obi-Wan Kenobi. It cannot get more explicit than that.
But there is an interesting and painful dialogue in the Gambit books, where it's clear that even if Obi-Wan does see them as his family, Anakin doesn't, not really.
Which is important because the prequels are about Anakin and his feelings. We follow a large part of his story from his point of view. And Anakin is wrong a lot.
We don't see a lot of day-to-day life, but just with Obi-Wan, we know that Jedi can have friends outside of the Order and good relationships with senators or people they met during their missions.
And like I said, being a Jedi isn't a job. They don't 'work there', they live there. This is a way of life.
It's funny that people think the Jedi have 'no real connection' when being a Jedi is all about connections. To the Force, to people, to the galaxy. They learn, they teach, they explore, they play the roles of moderators and protectors for many different societies and cultures in the galaxy. They're known for their wisdom and praised for their negotiating skills more than once, but still, people think that they're brainwashed and can't make their own choices.
So what's stopping them from leaving the Order if they're not happy about their life? Absolutely nothing.
We even have an example with Anakin himself, as a young padawan, wondering if he should leave the Order in the Obi-Wan & Anakin (2016) comic, and Obi-Wan and Yoda let him make his own decision. Obi-Wan even tells Yoda that he might leave with him if it comes to that.
Let's not forget the masters who decided to leave the Order and were remembered by having busts in the Jedi's archives anyway. Leaving doesn't even mean cutting all ties with the Order: at the beginning of AOTC, Mace Windu and Ki-Adi Mundi still defend Dooku when Padmé accuses him.
And of course you don't have to turn to the dark side to leave the Order. Dooku and Anakin did, but that's because there would be no epic story to tell if they only became nice and quiet civilians.
So no, the whole 'it was better back then' doesn't work, especially when we follow the story of Anakin, who is far from an objective point of view and refuses to be one from beginning to end.
