The family powerfully influences the larger economy and society. We introduce (and apply) Louis Althusser's analysis of the contradictions between family and economy in the US today. On the one hand, families are an "ideological state apparatus" shaping people in ways as important for sustaining capitalism as the police, courts and the military are (Althusser's "repressive state apparatuses"). Yet families also challenge and undermine capitalism. We explore these family-economy tensions.