Maybe it's a cultural thing... or an era thing. But I know this because my MIL and another one of my gf's mothers often comments "I wish I knew xyz" or "I wish I didn't do xyz". I had a conversation with my gf's mother tonight who said point blank "I watch my daughters and DIL's parent and I realise how bad of a parent I was." I asked her "Did you parent differently to everyone else around you? Were you subject to people who parented like we do now" to which she said she didn't. And she was genuinely upset by the fact that she wished she'd done things the way we do now. And her daughter said to me, it's the same for her and watching her SIL parent now with things like BLS which wasn't even something she knew about when her oldest (now in highschool) was a bub and she wished she did. I don't prescribe to the idea that everyone except our generation is naive or ignorant KWIM?

And with regards to parenting books, if you look at publications from the era they talked about needing to discipline children with smacking and how spoiling children was wrong. So I don't think having access to parenting books would have necessarily helped and I have no doubt that gentle parenting books would have been looked down on as bohemian or something. KWIM? It's not an excuse. And there is a big difference between parenting in the style of the times and abuse. I say this because I was abused, emotionally and physically. And it is VERY different. I also have no doubt that when our children are having children they will iron out more kinks too. Parenting to some extent is treated very much like a science and therefore it will evolve.