analog

Modern medicine and advanced law enforcement infrastructure account for the reduction in disease and crime. Those are both the result of economic growth, as are things like people affording houses bigger than a single room. These societal economic advances have nothing to do with societal principles, directly. What changes are the way people live their lives with the new options given them by these advances.

Prevailing societal opinions on things change over time, yes- but to discount societal principles of the past simply because the time period is consistent with other, unrelated things we've advanced from, is fallacious. We didn't advance from people having sex in the same room as their children because they suddenly decided it was disgusting and outmoded... they did so because living situations changed and people were able to procreate (or just bump uglies) in their own room. Over time, most things that are "the way it is" change into an opinion of "the way it should be". Think of any person who has ever related an ideal from their past, adding that now, "that's the way it should be".

This directly relates to the concept of privacy- something which is harped on and considered a moot point to argue against in America. When the family home became compartmentalized, what used to be a feeling of the family living together turned into everyone "needing" their "own space". An even better example of the learned behaviors that society amends its principles towards is the difference between America and most other developed countries in the world with how much space we seem to "need" to live comfortably. That is not something all humans know from birth- you learn it based on the way you live. Because we have space in America (for the moment), a single-occupancy apartment in america is huge in comparison to a single-occupancy apartment in europe, japan, china... just for examples. In areas where space is limited, living spaces are not made to be huge. That is what they're used to, so they never "learned" to "need" more space.

We change our principles based on how we live- the principles we're instilled with while growing up are changed and adapt to suit our wants and needs... then those principles are passed to the next generation, and more change is made.

We still see the idea of losing immodesty/privacy today in small children, when they bathe together- at some point, our values of privacy kick in and children of a certain age no longer share a tub. Immodesty and the "need" for privacy did not exist then the same way as it does now, and that's something else that needs to be considered when talking about how different things were then.

I'm not saying that their method of sex ed is the best, or the way to go- I'm just saying that the reactions I'm seeing about it being disgusting and this and that, are coming from a societal opinion that ignores the way people have been procreating for all time, up until the era of multi-room homes.