IMO, you are only looking through the lens of domestic abuse and not the larger societal impacts. No fault divorce has been around since well before the 1960s, so women weren’t chained to marriages. My grandmother went through more than her fair share of alcoholics and domestic abusers (married four times). Her first divorce was in 1946 and she was a Rosie the Riveter on Long Island and her dad was a coal miner. She had an outhouse until 1959, so she wasn’t exactly a woman of privilege. Yet she got out of harmful marriage just fine.

However, the greater ramifications of the ease of divorce have been the detrimental impacts psychologically for all the people that have experienced them. 25-35% of divorces are due to domestic abuse. Another 20% are due to adultery. That means around half are attributed to something else. And given that women initiate 80-90% of divorces, it only facilitates the path to an early exit when she gets half for a no fault divorce.

The 60’s saw an increase in divorce rates from 2.6/1000 to 6.2/1000. That’s nearly 250%. For reference, todays rate is closer to 2.7. And these divorces impacted not only women, but children as well. Those children are more likely to experience depression, anxiety, suicidality, and have academic performance that is a third of a standard deviation below their peers from intact families. This impacts them, but also has downstream consequences that last decades. More than any other time in our history. That’s a lot of harm and I wouldn’t say that you could call it a “grand” thing for society.

I see your point about some good things coming as a result, but that time period for families and society in general was a net loss (IMO) in many ways. Calling it “grand” minimizes the damages that occurred.