family vs association

family and association both are nouns.

Word	Noun	Adjective	Verb	Adverb
family	Yes	No	No	No
association	Yes	No	No	No

As nouns, association is a hypernym of family; that is, association is a word with a broader meaning than family:

family (noun)	association (noun)
primary social group; parents and children	the act of consorting with or joining with others
people descended from a common ancestor	the process of bringing ideas or events together in memory or imagination
a social unit living together	a formal organization of people or groups of people
(biology) a taxonomic group containing one or more genera	(ecology) a group of organisms (plants and animals) that live together in a certain geographical region and constitute a community with a few dominant species
a collection of things sharing a common attribute	(chemistry) any process of combination (especially in solution) that depends on relatively weak chemical bonding
an association of people who share common beliefs or activities	a relation resulting from interaction or dependence
a loose affiliation of gangsters in charge of organized criminal activities	a social or business relationship
a person having kinship with another or others	the state of being connected together as in memory or imagination