you know, it makes more sense to me to visualize the drakes as actually being a fairly physically affectionate family (whenever they were home at least)
because to me, it makes sense with tim's character that they were physically affectionate but more absent emotionally. because tim? tim is a hugger. you want full-on body hug, you want tim. so tim will be affectionate until the cows come home, but when it comes to actually having heart-to-heart emotional conversations? shut down.
anyways, here's some examples of the drakes/tim and being free with physical affection:
tim immediately goes in for a hug for comfort from bruce. tim also lovingly holds onto his father's hand as he lays in his hospital bed. this is shown to be pretty instictive for tim, to reach for physical affection for comfort--he's clearly also very comfortable doing so with his own father. what he doesn't ask for, what he keeps inside from bruce and from his dad, is all of his thoughts and emotions about everything that's going on. to me, this would make sense if he was used to getting hugs from his parent, but not feel like he's able to tell them how he feels inside.
the hand holding continues through tim's first and second robin mini-series. i think it's an interesting juxtaposition of tim being able to hold tight to his dad's hand while not feeling like he can actually tell him anything.
robin iii #6, robin #7, nightwing #20
the casual physical affection continues. tim is clearly no stranger to hugging his dad and his dad clearly loves to hug his son. the hugs are assurance that they love each other, but also almost seem like they're there so the two don't actually have to talk about anything. was physical affection a way to try and show love without having to have any hard conversations?
honestly, jack in general seems like the kind of guy who would rather just hug than have to talk about his feelings. the first panel is from when tim runs back to gotham from keystone and jack has just yelled at him very aggressively for running away. however, he's decided tim is right and gotham is home and as a way to fix things he goes straight to a group family hug. the second one is after they lost their fortune--jack is having a very hard time with the loss of the company. they have to let mrs. mac go (and jack agrees with tim that they should give her money from the sale of the redbird so she can go home) and jack's the one who gives her a big old i'm gonna miss you so much hug. easy for him to give physical affection, hard for him to open up emotionally about how he's being affected by this (kind of like his son, hmmm).
so overall, the drakes seem like they were actually fairly physically affectionate with their son through his life. tim is a big hugger (seriously, he hugs everyone and seems very comfortable with affection) and tends to reach out for comfort in the form of physical affection and has a very tactile way of comforting other people (hugs them, hand holding, shoulder touching) however struggles more on the emotional side of things. this seems fairly consistent to me if he grew up being shown physical affection as a stop-gap for his emotional needs not always being met.
as a super interesting contrast:
so in the war games arc after jack has found out tim is robin, the two are finally able to have more of an emotional connection and really finally talk to each other--but they're markedly more physically distant (not touching, can't even look at each other) now that everything is out in the open. they've lost the ability to act like everything is solved once they've hugged it out and therefore don't have to think about it ever again.
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