I've been thinking a lot about this since posting and I've come up with two ideas.
First, I think the move from farm girl to suburban princess over the course of a generation really changed women. The older relatives to which I refer (all gone now) either grew up on the farm, or had a farm in the family. The one thing that is universal, even to this day, about people that grew up on a farm is the understand life, sex and death better than other people.
They're real practical people- none of this princess bullshit that sprang up in the 50's and 60's. The girls in my HS that grew up on a farm, or maybe just raised horses in some cases, didn't have this prissy princess idea about dating and how many hoops a guy should have to jump through to get in their pants. You weren't going to seduce one of them- they either wanted to fuck or they didn't, and they'd let you know.
Second, once we established a generation of suburban princesses raised on rainbows and "nobody's good enough for my baby" attitudes, the feminist movement comes along just in time to make things worse.
If you recall, it didn't take long for the movement to become radicalized and go from equal right for women, to women are the victims of a subjugated underclass, and finally, women are superior- but still need a whole bunch of laws tilting the playing field in their direction at work, in college admissions, promotions etc.. A new quota system was created in all sort of areas (particularly big corps. that frantically promoted women at the expense of more qualified men) and men have been in the decline ever since. I know at least ten men my age that have been unemployed for 4 or 5 years while their wives careers just keep going up. I don't even want to get started on this subject.
But I'm pretty familiar with whole feminist issue since my wife was at the age where she was very impressionable (in the 1970's) and the change in her attitude led directly to me wanting a divorce. I watched in horror as this wonderful young woman I married kept coming home with books from all the feminist authors, and a few years later wasn't even someone I wanted to live with. To her credit, however, she was so shocked when I said I wanted a divorce that she really changed her ways for husband #2. He has yet to thank me, but he should.
Anyway, those are jut two ideas I had. I really expected my comments, but maybe I'm the only one that thinks about this sort of thing.