I think Malcom is far worse than Milah. I think you have to include everything Mal did as PP, and his choices as PP go way beyond anything Milah ever did.
I tend to agree. We have a tendency to, when a character as a radical name change, to say that those two people are separate. Malcolm wasn’t a good father but PP is; but Malcolm = PP and PP =Malcolm. This isn’t a case of Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde. When Malcolm became PP he just became powerful and it heightened his worst qualities.
She asked him to move but he would not, though now we understand better his fear of moving for a fresh start.
While I don’t think that moving would have done anything for Rumple/Milah, at least Milah *did* say they could try. When Malcolm went out to try and find a job, he just fell back into his nasty habits of drinking away any money he got. That is one of the final things Malcolm said to Baby!Rumple was “anywhere we go, I’ll jut go back to my old ways” (paraphrasing). If Malcolm couldn’t have the life he wanted-youth, the ability to fly–then he didnt even want to try.
Malcolm chose to leave Rumple with strangers. They may have been kind women, who treated Rumple well and provided him with the potential for a good life but it is not like Malcolm knew they would LOVE him.
We don’t even know for sure what Malcolm thought the Shadow was going to do with Rumple. We don’t know that Malcolm knew the shadow would be taking him back to the spinsters.