Batman Begins was the first time I saw Alfred in a fatherly role to Bruce. I’d not read any (DC) comics then, so exposure had been from other media. It was well-done there, I thought. Beautiful relationship. I read comics later. Unfortunately, I had difficulty reconciling that that good-father-Alfred would result in a Bruce as emotionally damaged as his comic-book self. I watched a few early eps of Gotham, and thought it worked better there. Alfred had more wrong calls (Bruce’s fight with other kid, etc.) and the entire dynamic (both guardian and employee) was problematic enough that I could easily see Bruce growing up into a very screwed up adult.
The thing in the comics is that Bruce has gotten progressively more emotionally damaged since post-Crisis (probably earlier, but definitely since then). While I haven't read many New52 stories, I can say in the early 2000s, Bruce seemed almost incapable of any sort of healthy relationship. Other times it's ebbed and flowed. He’ll do okay for a while, then not. And as this has happened, Alfred has been more integrated into Bruce’s childhood. As, oddly, was Leslie at one point.
Indeed, in early post-crisis years, at one point Dick even says that he’s healthier because he had the emotional support (in Alfred and Bruce) that Bruce did not have and was not alone as Bruce was. Or something along those lines. And that made a sort of sense.
But I do really like parent!Alfred for Bruce.
Thing is that I also like Bruce and Dick, duo. The way they were in the Golden Age. I like that Bruce took in the child and that he planned to raise him. That he was never going to just make the gesture and put the hard work on Alfred. I'm just not keen on the idea of Bruce taking in Dick, and then Alfred having to clean up his mess and coax Bruce into being a parent. And yeah, I do kind of like Bruce & Dick being the first Bat-fam relationship, as they originally were.
Part of it, too, is that I like Bruce being a good parent to Dick, even as he wasn't to Tim or Cass or Damian at times. Because I feel like Dick, as a character, was developed out of that (particularly in the 1970s and 1980s), and it doesn't work the same if Bruce was the guy he was later (post-crisis self) back earlier (when Dick was a kid).
Now, some have gone with the notion that Bruce was all closed off, grim & gritty, and then was made better by Dick. I get the idea. I think I’ve been told All Star Batman and Robin was supposedly trying to do that. And you know, there’s Batman: Year One. I don't like Miller’s Batman, BTW.
I think I kinda like elements of The Batman cartoon (though much less exaggerated) in the idea that Bruce is actually happy in his early Batman days. He's achieving his goal, he’s cleaning up Gotham. Success is just a few years away. He (like his golden age self) thinks he'll have a life and family one day and retire. Starts at 25, and he’ll be done by 35, he thinks. But then, as the years wear on, he sees only where he's failed instead of where he's succeeded. He sees how far he has to go (in cleaning up Gotham) instead of how far he's come. And he becomes increasingly focused on his goal to the exclusion of other aspects of life. And as this starts to occur (maybe 10 year anniversary of Batman, an age when he thought he'd be done by), Dick is growing up and away from Bruce and developing his own life goals, and that causes conflict, too.
On the other hand, the version where Bruce’s life is indelibly marked by "before" and "after" and almost everything about him switched like the flip of lightswitch in that moment (as seemed to be early Gotham series), has its own sort of appeal. The one where Bruce is profoundly damaged from that moment on, and where being Batman is never a healing or good or cathartic process, but always an unhealthy and damaging manifestation of that trauma (helping others or fighting crime doesn’t help him heal or keep the negative emotions at bay) also has its dramatic appeal. Though I'm not sure a healthy Dick Grayson can be raised that way, and I like a healthy Dick Grayson.
So, while both sides have their strengths, I really have to go with Alfred coming later. Bruce not having that parental support at all as child works better, I think. And I also very much like the idea that Bruce started off as Batman pretty happy. He was in a good place and raised a good kid. But then the years just wore on him.
I also, though, don't like Bruce as he became increasingly abrasive and then abusive to his family. So I'd stop him at late '90s level difficult, before a lot of horrific things he did later, but still after he has plenty of problematic actions to his name. Hoel him there a couple years. Then have him slowly work back to a better place with his family and his own mental health (perhaps using his lost-in-time era for introspection and him to decide he needed that).
Dick, I like in 1980-1986 (maybe up to 1990) and then Dixon years. Before he became philander or an immature air-head and "not a big thinker" (he so was a big thinker in those days, and a brilliant detective, too) or Batman-lite - taking Robin away or lying to his family and hurting them.