I dont see why you are being down voted. You presented a rational well written statement about the topic at hand, two statements actually and people seem to want to Downvote you because they can't wrap their minds around something they never lived through that Doesn't fit into their little perfect world.

We will never fully understand why they did this, what women of the day actually thought of it, and how prevalent it actually was because hey! We weren't there for the whole history of China nor are we versed and up to speed with the cultural mindset of the time.

Humans did fucked up things, whether this or bringing together tens of thousands, some voluntarily some not, to be slaughtered in front of millions in a religious sacrifice (Mayans). We can read and study but we should not try to fully understand what was going through these peoples minds or what it was like back in the day. Just as maybe 2000 years from now people will say "my holy noodlesess look at what those humans did to themselves. Subjecting themselves to all ther toxins in the air, water and land and then when they got sick exposing themselves to doses of radiation. What were they thinking." or the paying money to go tanning instead of sitting under the nice free thing called the sun so we can look like pieces of leather when in the end all we do is give ourselves skin cancer.

/rant