Still can't understand why anyone should view traditional songs as any kind of template for living or social development.
They are history. Each is a cameo of a time and place and the thoughts of the songwriter. They are more educational than most 'official' history books because (the Rev. B-G and his like aside) they are unrevised, not politically corrected, and the winners didn't write them all. I prefer unrevised history to cloud cuckoo-land, don't you?

I'm also not sure that violence toward women is anything other than bullying someone weaker. I've never hit a woman in my life, but glib and persistant women have had me shaking with rage, to the point where I WOULD have fought a man, had I been suitably lubricated.
Some people can live alongside a powder-keg, others HAVE to light the fuse. I'm not saying all the battered females brought it on themselves, but that I don't understand how they can live in a tiger's cage.
Sorry about all the cliches.