Abuse means things you would go to jail for today. Like daily beatings, widespread sexual abuse, you name it. For example, it was widely-believed until the 19th century that children are born immoral and evil, and that if their parents didn't beat them regularly, they would never become "good" people. Child sexual abuse wasn't considered something harmful to the child until this century -- it was just a sexual perversion on the part of the adult (and even that only came about at the insistence of the church) Girls as young as 3 were burned at the stake in medieval times for "seducing" adult men. In medieval times, it was common to see dead babies in the gutters of cities. People just abandoned them.

It goes on and on, and on. It's hard to imagine, but the historical evidence is abundant. :-P