You are correct both approaches are considered hacked but you see the reason why he does this is so that he could pass off those pokemon with hacked parents as legit(currently there is no way of finding out and I bet there never will be :(.....). If he hacked the pokemon directly then he wouldn't be able to trade them off without getting blacklisted and banned.Lol, why not hack the Pokemon you want in the first place? It doesn't make sense to hack the parents and then go through the strenuous task of breeding!
I think both approaches would be considered illegal anyway.
IMO you shouldn't hack parents I mean come on that's the same as scamming people. All forms of hacking cannot be called legit in any way enough said.
@hybrid: you are very right chances that anyone who trades through wifi already has some of this hacked gene babies even if they don't know it.
Another thing I believe that a couple of traders here use this method. The new peepz I have reason to believe do this. Also a couple of others as well.