This reminds me of the Yoga Bera quote, (paraphrasing) "that place is so busy, nobody goes there any more." If manual was universal, then everybody used to kno

This reminds me of the Yoga Bera quote, (paraphrasing) "that place is so busy, nobody goes there any more." If manual was universal, then everybody used to know how to drive it. The situation you describe wouldn't have made sense 50 years ago. The only reason a generation of wives would know how to drive automatic but not manual is if automatic was already the mainstream choice. So what you're saying might strengthen the feedback loop, but it can't be the cause of the trend to start with.