The present study aims to analyze the meanings attributed to family and daily caretaking by families assisted at The Story I Tell Cultural Center, civil society organization located in the West Side of Rio de Janeiro capital. It is a research of qualitative approach, as from a script developed to be implemented within five families that inhabit a vulnerable territory, crossed by intense violence and invisible to public authorities, aiming to identify their conceptions and practices of family caretaking. The methodological resource for data analysis was the content analysis as from its theme modality. The results point to the need to understand families from a historical and sociocultural context, considering the ways of life plurality, in which are built various kinds of caretaking. The research certified the existence of a theoretical caretaking that occasionally dissent from the caretaking practice in daily relationships, strongly influenced by the State Familism context, a State little present in the assurance of family support public policies in its caretaker function.