A lot of people I read (particularly social conservatives) speak of the sexual revolution as a fundamental and unprecedented change in sexual attitudes and behavior. And there were some unprecedented things, particularly around birth control.

However, when I read about history, I sometimes doubt how much things actually changed in the sexual revolution. A large number of weddings prior to the sexual revolution were shotgun weddings, implying that there was tons of premarital sex going on. In many many times in history prostitution use was common and sometimes even expected. There is a lot of talk in the historical record of men having mistresses, and so on. There seems to have been evidence of consensual nonmonogamy in the 1940s during the war, too.

So yeah, my question is, how revolutionary was the sexual revolution really?