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I don't think transgenerational rates of self-reported happiness or mental illness are particularly reliable measurements, for a number of reasons. Someone in the 30s probably wouldn't even think to diagnose themselves with 'anxiety' or 'OCD' while someone in 2023 with the very same symptoms would. As for happiness, it's not obvious that this is measurement invariant. To use an extreme example, if you asked a medieval peasant and a 20th century accountant to rate their happiness on a scale of 1 - 10, and the peasant said '6' and the accountant said '5,' this is very weak evidence at best that the accountant would be happier living the life of the peasant.
Even if you take such measures at face value, Western Europe has not seen similar decreases in self-reported happiness and life satisfaction as the USA, despite undergoing the same and in some cases even more extensive liberalization of sexual mores. This is also true for suicide rates, which have been steadily dropping in Europe for decades as they've risen in the US. Unless Americans are uniquely susceptible to the negative effects of the SR, it's mostly something else.
The institution of no-fault divorce seems to have resulted in a large drop in female suicide rates and domestic violence. That's a pretty clear case of improving the condition of women.
Even granting young people having less sex is a bad thing (weren't people complaining about teen STD and pregnancy rates forever?), this trend seems to have started abruptly in the 90s, so blaming it on the SR is dubious unless you can demonstrate some kind of delayed-trigger mechanism.
I'm unsure what you're referring to here. What is so complicated about relationships today?
I disagree these are bad things. There's nothing actually preventing anyone who wants to from getting married. Most of the poor outcomes of children of single mothers (income, education, crime, etc.) don't manifest in the children of widows, so the much-touted disastrous impacts of raising a child outside of a two-parent home seem to be mostly down to confounding.
Birth rates have been cratering since way before the sexual revolution.
I think excluding trans generational mental health data is a bit of a cope for the pro sexual revolution side. It’s a back door way of ignoring data that points to the traditional relationship view.
Looking at the statistics of people seeking treatment for anxiety and depression show people seeking out more treatment today than in 1983 or 1963. We know there’s much more divorce now than there was in the past. Even statistics that show generational problems like school success, family formation, drugs and alcohol as much bigger problems now than in the past.
I don't think the data is worthless but I think it's highly problematic for the reasons mentioned. It's extremely hard to control for all of the other potential factors at work.
I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing. If people can dissolve relationships they don't want to be in, I think that's generally a good thing. The alternative to being divorced usually isn't being in a good marriage, but being in a bad one. I'm not convinced the purported terrible effects on children are all that large or relevant net of other factors.
I'm not sure what you mean by "school success." More people go to school than ever before. Certain test scores have dropped since the 60s (but others haven't), but way more people take tests like the SAT than they did back then. Alcoholism is significantly lower today than it was in the 70s. Druge use appears to be worse, yes.
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