How can the political meaning of the family and its relationship with the state be redefined in the liberal era? This chapter explores three answers that rearticulate the standing of the family within the liberal commonweal and redraw the balance between family and state. The responses differ in their narration of the interest that the liberal state has in the institution of the family, depicting the latter as an agency of the state, an organ of the state, or an apolitical space that marks the state’s limits and dependence on prepolitical conditions. The three approaches are presented as concurrent trends representing discrepant versions of liberalism as a political theory.