Thomas Wilson comments

@Tiana Young

Fully agree with this. If you are working full time and your salary is ¥200,000 or under, you definitely need to focus on how you failed so miserably in life to be making such low wages. No time to waste on dating for sure!

: sometimes people get stuck through no fault of their own. My mother has a great employment history, 2 bachelors degrees (and not useless fields, one was criminal justice, and I forget the other), teaching certificate, and a CDL (commercial driver's license - needed to drive heavy equipment, buses, and other large vehicles). She still struggles to even make over 20,000 USD a year (around ¥2,000,000 annual still below ¥200,000 per month). She left her last really good job due to mistreatment by her superior (she was fairly high up in the company but still had a boss to answer to). That was several years ago now. She's even relocated to other states a few times when she could afford to, to try for different jobs. No luck (jobs not hiring, or someone with just that little bit more experience or higher degree (MBA, etc) winning out). So trying to say someone failed at life to making a low wage, is just heartless ignorance :( .

The economy in the US even isn't great for trying to raise children. Both parents usually have to work, and even then, they barely scrape by since childcare costs are also high, but one parent working with another as a stay-at-home, just doesn't work for the vast majority of people. From everything I've read/watched, Japan isn't much different. Maybe a little worse since they have less in the way of daytime childcare services for working parents, and the few that do exist usually have long wait lists and are definitely not cheap.

Even where I work, many of my co-workers have second jobs (1 part-time, 1 full-time), and their spouses also work full-time, just to barely not have to worry too much about finances, but then, they never see their families, as they are working 70+ hours a week. They all come in straight from their other jobs, not even stopping at home, and when they go home at the end of the night, their family is already asleep.

So from my perspective the biggest problem in most developed nations when it comes to being able to have a family is a) finances and b) time away from the job(s). And as has been proven over time by social economists, the lower on the income ladder a family is, the less likely it is for a child of that family will ever go above that. In most cases, they either end up at the same level, or even lower, as the parents couldn't afford college, and the financial aid just wasn't there, other than massive loans that most can't afford). Japan's schools are even more expensive in most cases, as they don't nearly have the same level of financial aid programs available in the US. Even high schools in Japan cost money.

There are lots more factors other than what I've talked about with money and childcare, etc. but from my own studies and reading, I believe them to be the biggest issues.