So in your scenario, whats the first and most important logical question how will you afford it with just one income? The answer is you can’t. And if you’re straight out of high school extremely so. What job is going to be paying him enough? he’s gonna have to quit college and work extremely long hours at a low paying job just to make ends meet and keep everyone alive. You don’t have time to go to school when you’re working until day break.
Sure, it would be great to have kids young like in the 1950’s but that’s not physically possible in 99% of the world. And with japans horrible work ethics that child basically will never see its father again, he’ll work 100+ hours just to keep his job because he has such a low skill set because he has to get a job strait out of high school becauseeeeeee… you get my point?
It has nothing to do with biology, I don’t even know why you brought that up. Kinda low key weird bringing up that. No one cares about breedability…. That’s not what people are talking about ever….
I brought it up because you don't even know whether the characters wanted to have kids or not and advised them to use contraceptives just because they are young and current societal norm dictates having children early as bad.
First let us know what they want or not before advising them.
As for earning income and other issues, the problem isn't from that, but the lack of Family support system, as it has become a norm to always be far and away from the parents (aka., by being independent). A family is meant to form a group and support each other. And there is a certain time for creating a new family within the family and certain time to find work and earn.
And you are only seeing it on the Economic aspect, and nothing else.
I mean, there are plenty of people who have kids early, and are still studying while also having a job/work on the side to support their family and they are living a happy life (especially in the current system, were you don't really need a degree to earn as long as you have some talent and support, you can earn thousands easily).
Let's say they do go for job security first and then marry, while that ends up taking decade's to achieve because the dream of wanting to get a stable job is never ending. Unless you hit a jackpot and land a good job early, you would be in work hell until you are late in your 30's or 40's.
This is not only hampering marriage and childbirth, but this has also increased infidelity case as well (especially among married women in Japan). Because by the time they decide to form a family it's too late for them emotionally.
The focus of being independent and creating families late, is also one of the reasons why nowadays the number of elderlies who end up in old age homes is high, as they had kids late, so by the time the kids grow up and start working the parents are too old to look after themselves, and because of the forced "independent living" lifestyle, the children don't look after their parents either.
Quiting college to find a job isn't really a big thing either, as their are millions of over-qualified people fighting for good position ending up working for lower position or in bad companies, which is just ending up increasing the baseline for the job, causing more problems for the future employees. Just saying that higher education doesn't mean a good job (atleast in Asian region), because 80% of people here do that and score 90% or higher (and no, not everyone wants to find some job in a foreign country).
Aka., higher education doesn't guarantee anything in Asia, as their are plenty of jobless people with over-qualification certificate roaming around and forced to pick up menial jobs. In the end all that matters is Luck and connections, neither qualification or education.
And you are talking about bad Japanese work culture. Yeah, it's bad that people are avoiding having families to begin with as it's too much hassle, and only focus on personal solo life (reason why birthrate is getting so bad).
There is also the cultural factor to remember. In Japan, past 30's women don't really get married as they are considered too old to have a proper family with, as Japanese men prefer younger women as youth mean fertility.