[mleonhard]

Yes. I am a victim of intergenerational abuse. My grandmother consistently beat my father to force obedience. Then he and my mother consistently beat me and my siblings to force obedience. I even believed that it was the best way to raise children. Many years later, I realized it is abuse and a source of emotional problems.

[exporectomy]

Sorry to hear that. There were a lot of best practices just a couple of generations ago that we see as harmful today and I sometimes wonder how humans could have existed for 100,000 years and only in our lifetimes finally realized how to not abuse kids.

Perhaps they really were the best ways to get some kind of outcome like an aggressive man for fighting wars or protecting himself from violence or a hard worker able to tolerate tedium and not be too aspirational despite the personal emotional cost. Or perhaps even the emotional problems wouldn't exist if the rest of society was compatible with those ways?

[mleonhard]

I think most of our ancestors were miserable. That didn't stop them from having children.