The one story we know is that he played baseball with Dean, and this pissed John off. This probably did make Bobby feel like he was better with the kids than John was, but it's not much for evidence of fatherhood
Urgh thank you, I hate the narrative the show kept trying to push of Bobby being more of a father to them than John ever was. I can absolutely believe that Bobby would see it that way, but then it's easy to just be the friendly 'Uncle Bobby' and chastise John (not unjustly) for being too hard on the boys, but that's not the same thing as actually being a parent to them. There's no real indication that either Dean or Sam would have responded to Bobby as a father figure in their childhood if he ever had attempted to say discipline them, he was more the grouchy uncle figure that they stayed with occasionally.
I know that things got slightly retconned later on as obviously the writers did want to change it to Bobby being a bigger influence on their childhood, but when we first meet Bobby in season 1 the show is pretty clear that they they lost contact with him after John fell out with Bobby and that they haven't seen him in years, so my impression is that it was really only as adults that they truly bonded with Bobby. He did not raise them as children.
I think that Dean did occasionally look at Bobby as an alternative to John, wishing that his own father had been more like Bobby when it came to offering him emotional support and validation, but yeah I don't even get that much from Sam really. He cared about Bobby, but I never felt like he saw him as a father
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Urgh thank you, I hate the narrative the show kept trying to push of Bobby being more of a father to them than John ever was. I can absolutely believe that Bobby would see it that way, but then it's easy to just be the friendly 'Uncle Bobby' and chastise John (not unjustly) for being too hard on the boys, but that's not the same thing as actually being a parent to them. There's no real indication that either Dean or Sam would have responded to Bobby as a father figure in their childhood if he ever had attempted to say discipline them, he was more the grouchy uncle figure that they stayed with occasionally.
I know that things got slightly retconned later on as obviously the writers did want to change it to Bobby being a bigger influence on their childhood, but when we first meet Bobby in season 1 the show is pretty clear that they they lost contact with him after John fell out with Bobby and that they haven't seen him in years, so my impression is that it was really only as adults that they truly bonded with Bobby. He did not raise them as children.
I think that Dean did occasionally look at Bobby as an alternative to John, wishing that his own father had been more like Bobby when it came to offering him emotional support and validation, but yeah I don't even get that much from Sam really. He cared about Bobby, but I never felt like he saw him as a father