Quite possibly the most unintentionally funny scene in a movie

You have to be careful about ascribing intentions. The way it's set up at the end of the sequence makes it seem that it's supposed to be a joke. But you're laughing at Glenn Ford, while the audience was supposed to laugh at his silly girlfriend. And frankly she was very silly. She's a proto-feminist, but makes her living as a fashion designer, in her words roughly "pushing my own strange taste on other people who have none at all." She talks about being on equal footing with her husband, but she sits and waits in the car when they arrive at the summer camp until he goes around and opens the door for her. She's a pretty sad excuse for a feminist, and that's the butt of that joke I think. But you can take it however you want to take it.

Did I not love him, Cooch? MY OWN FLESH I DIDN'T LOVE BETTER!!! But he had to say 'Nooooooooo'

It was typical for the times. The media liked to depict men as stubborn regarding the "woman's movement" and women were shown to be changing but not too much.