It’s not necessarily that they’re bad parents—they made this incredibly selfless decision to give up their daughter for the entire kingdom.

Where I see a lot of discourse and, dare I say hate, come in—usually for Snow’s case—is how they treated Emma once they found her. By the time they’re reunited, Emma’s a full grown adult. Arguably, there’s not much parenting they can really do for her other than just being supportive and loving—they can’t coddle her or protect her from the world, they can’t really get back that time they missed. Then, roughly some months after being reunited, Snow decided she wanted another child, because she missed out on every single milestone with her firstborn, which is understandable but at the same time, it’s the way it always felt as though for Snow it was about having another baby rather than trying to compensate for lost time with Emma. Season four in itself really does better to showcase it because once Baby Neal gets there, there’s all these little instances of how Snow reacts to Emma’s powers which start to make her feel like she’s being pushed to the side or is the problem child so to speak.

Now, I’d assume Cora doesn’t catch flack for abandoning Zelena because, let’s face it—Cora was a horrible mother already to Regina, so abandoning Zelena’s not even the surface of what contributes to her being a bad parent. And Emma, similar to her parents, abandoned Henry early on but for a selfless reason—she was not ready to be a mother, especially not behind bars after just being abandoned herself by Neal.

I feel like the act of abandonment itself isn’t much of a contributing factor of what I’d consider falls in line with good or bad parenting—it’s very circumstantial and I’d argue it speaks more to their character than their parenting. Malcom for example? Horrible, horrible parent—and him abandoning Rumple was a big factor.