I read parent's comments more as a counter argument to the suggestion more people would be vegetarian if they had to kill their own animals for food, not a moral justification based on "people used to do it".

I read it as both, especially given the "I'm a hunter and hunting is great" bit. It is moral psychology. There is an implicit notion of what it means to be a human, and what is ethically sound is tied up with it, because it is universal, beyond time and place, and thus normal and good.

In this particular ethical issue it is an eternal tug-of-war between humans as essentially vegans by nature, corrupted by cloaking animal suffering in neat, pre-slaughtered packages (if we would only see...), and the other side presenting humans as one of the animals eating other animals. We are made out to be part of a natural order as hunter and butcher, which is both normal and good. Modern sensibilities around animal suffering is seen as a whimsy aberration of normality, artificial and unnatural. It is both descriptive and normative, and the what-is functions as a tool for the what-should.

This does lead to pretty bad 'science' (on both sides, really) and conversations that are very loaded around basic facts. I would agree if you would say the what-is does not depend on the what-should-be and vice versa, free will and all, but this is often not how ethical conversations (and rhetoric) works.

No, it was not. It was common to spank your children, out of care and love, when they did things dangerous to themselves or others, and sometimes a strap or switch when something truly horrific was done.

We now view this as wrong, but that wasn't beating them.

Yes, some idiots did beat their children, or hit their children out of anger. That doesn't mean it was common.

From what I observe, although spanking is described as basically harmless, not everyone who lived through it see it as something that improved their lives. Even if it was administered by well-meaning, loving parents.

To be clear, as this is often required on HN, I was speaking of a subset of spanking:

out of care and love, when they did things dangerous to themselves or others, and sometimes a strap or switch when something truly horrific was done.

In other words, never because fed up / angry. Never because of minor situations, and so on. For example, swearing isn't "dangerous to themselves or others". Spanking employed when the life of the child or others is involved, is a short-cut to locking an intense memory into long-term recall.

This sort of event is rare.

And to be frank? "Improved their lives" isn't necessarily important. Note how I state "dangerous to themselves or others"? Siblings and other children have to be taken into account.

Lastly, and take this from someone with grey hair, it wasn't until my 30s that I started to appreciate some of the discipline I disagreed with as a child. Disagreeing, doesn't mean it was wrong.

"Yes, some idiots did beat their children, or hit their children out of anger. That doesn't mean it was common."

In the areas that still do beat their children, they commonly do beat more, when they are angry.

Okay, I believe my argument is not hurt by replacing the word „beat“ with „spank“. Adding that physical punishment was done out of love strengthens my argument, I think.

The change is spanking is not because spanking is harmful but because the world doesn't need it. The environment people are in is much more gentle, so it's not necessary to raise children that can handle large amounts of adversity.

We also don't teach our kids to defend themselves against sword attacks, for the same reason - it's no longer necessary.

Your argument implies that the past behavior was bad and we should change it, but that's incorrect. The past behavior was correct for its time. If someone would have raised a child without spanking 100 years ago they would end up with a weak person who could not live in the real world, this would be a bad thing.

I’m not particularly knowledgeable about early child development but I believe the science we have today says that spanking is in fact harmful and spanking your children does not „toughen them up“.