From the 20’s onward we were pushed to the left. That wasn’t “freed up” social norms. That was the start of making women unhappy with their roles as wives and mother’s. FDR was a champ at socialism.
Funny how the twenties went left with virtually wall to wall republican federal governance, spiking capitalism, and the emergence on nationality enhancing movies, radio, and auto travel.
AAMOF literature of the time was uniformly critical of dominant culture. Sinclair Lewis and the ‘lost generation’ in Europe weren’t writing paeans to society at large. HL Mencken railed against a zeitgeist that refused to move.