I've owned nothing but "Google phones" since the Nexus 4 and don't know what you're talking about. Do you mean smart unlock?

Pushing hard is pretty subjective, I don't see a "hard" push to turn off security features. As a matter of fact I've seen warnings about disabling the lock screen.

My Pixel 3 prompted me to turn off the auto-locking feature when I was at home because it saw that I unlocked my phone a lot in that geofenced location. It also did that at my old job as well since the situation was pretty similar. I would get this prompt about once a month.

So I would agree, it's not a hard push, Google is def nudging people towards less secure logins. My S10+ asked me this same question about a week into owning the phone, but it never bothered me about it again once I declined. And at no point in either system was the I made aware of the risks I was accepting if I enabled it.

So, not a Google specific issue, but it's a less than ideal approach considering how sensitive peoples phones are today.

I have had multiple Pixels, and have been prompted multiple times to turn on "smart unlock" when connected to my home WiFi network or to my smartwatch or within a geo area.

It's unclear what "smart unlock" actually is, but as far as I can see it means my phone can be unlocked just with a swipe.