Third option. Not to cohabit or marry. Bachelorhood for life.
Take an honorable person. After earning a college degree they are $100k in debt, but cannot get the high paying job they trained for. Even at that point, many will put off establishing a relationship until they can “afford it.” It’s even worse if both potential spouses are deeply in debt.
But even an individual does get that job, they are looking at a decade before they are just broke, not in debt. But this means a “lost decade” before they could begin where there parents were, when they were right out of college.
So instead of a 22 year old looking for a spouse, they are 32 years old. Females may have only eight to ten years left before menopause. But say they are “lucky” again. Married at 32, they are still penniless.
There is no way they could afford a mortgage on a horribly overpriced house, maybe five times more expensive than it should be. So if they want even one child, they will have to raise them in an apartment.
This is all generic models, of course, and many people have *some* advantages over it; but many have disadvantages added to it as well.
It is all too easy to just say, “I am too poor to date, or even if I could date I could never offer a decent life to a spouse, and children are out of the question. It is just better that I not *harm* anyone. There are still some people out there who can date, and marry, and have children, but I’m just not one of them.”
Not many people are called to lifelong sexual continence, which is what we’re talking about for a person of sincere Christian faith. Recognizing this, a person (with help from his parents and other, wiser parties) might make different decisions in his life *before* he finds himself 40 and broke.
The situations you keep discussing exist, but they are not inevitable. People can make different choices, especially (as I mentioned earlier) if they see themselves as empowered decision-makers, responsible, to some extent, for their own outcomes, rather than victims of forces beyond their control.
Well ... there's your problem, right there.
Better to start with 2 years of community college, work, get the BS/BA on the 6 year plan, don't go to a more expensive college than you can afford ... whatever it takes to NOT be $100K in debt upon graduation.
And ...
Major in something useful.