You need only look around the forum to see there are plenty of people with families, responsibilities and interests other than coding who have a lot of what I mentioned under their belts 
But yeah, if you were an employer and you were looking for something else, you totally get to decide what that criteria is. For me personally I’d want to work with people who share the same passion - and perhaps even more importantly in some areas other than coding, which is something you often get an idea about through things like blog posts or forum posts (for me that is wanting to make the world a better place).
I think a portfolio is always a good idea if you you want to be employed, but it doesn’t always have to be via the obvious - hence I agree with what @mindok said - that activity and presence doesn’t always have to be via repos/OS libs:
I have mentioned it a few times now but not long after I got into programming a number of prominent Ruby/Rails companies offered me work based purely on my blog posts and activity on public spaces. Even now while having been in Elixir for all these years I still get job offers from Ruby outfits (most of my blog posts were about Ruby - and those getting in touch are usually people I have met or spoken to along that journey. i.e not random recruiters, of which I actually get next to no contact - thank goodness!)
The funny thing is I never blogged with the intention of wanting job offers (I am far too happy doing my own thing) but make a point of mentioning it because there’s nothing special about me or what I can do in a technical sense (especially back then) yet I still got offers and I firmly believe it was because of those blog posts because I literally didn’t do anything else 
hence why I feel it could help others.
Generally people hire people - if what you post and how you come across on public platforms like this resonates with others, then imo there’s a good chance you’ll get noticed 
