The main problem is how writers approach Bruce. There is an inherent problem in how many creators see him and they'd probably be writing him that way even if there was a smaller Bat-family.
But sometimes some of Bruce's worst asshole moments occur not in his main books, but in the spin off books. By the writers of the Bat-Family who choose to write him that way to give drama to the protagonists of the book. Like one of the seemingly most infamous recent examples is him beating up Jason, but that was in Jason's book by Jason's author, not Bruce. Stuff like that is obnoxious as all get out. Along with his hand in the Ric nonsense, maybe anything by Lobdell should be automatically dismissed? lol
In general, I think the timing of the Bat-Family exploding while Batman becomes more and more of an enormous douchebag is just an unfortunate coincidence. Morrison wrote the best Batman in recent memory because he injected some of the old pre-COIE flavor back into the character, and he used as many characters as possible in Batman INC. So it can be done, just not that often. I know lots of people are nostalgic for the Dixon days, but that's where it gradually started to go wrong. Bruce's allies don't even seem to like him, and I can't entirely blame them. But if I can't care about the main character (and not many of the others are interesting enough for me) and nobody seems to like each other and it's just misery city, why should I be invested?
There are times when I would be 100% ok with a clean reboot without all the baggage and we can get a better Bruce again.