Without the intention to start a silly discussion about it, but it sounds like everyone in your family has an iPhone. Google Play Store is safe enough.. Never had one problem in my lifetime. Whole family with android. Greetings from Europe...

following that logic, you don't allow your family to be near a desktop computer, do you? all those third party programs not approved by your OS distributor surely are scary.

It's not like installing third party apps in Android is something someone can do by mistake. You have to specifically enable it in the options and allow it for the app that acted as a source.

Most users never do this and use the Play Store just fine, which is neither more secure or insecure than the Apple Store.

Android works just fine with the Play Store being locked down but enabling other sources being trivial if you know where to look.

Heck, even Apple isn’t a stranger to this way of doing things. For like a decade now Mac’s Gatekeeper has given you a warning that is easily bypassed when you try to install something that isn’t either from the Mac App Store or from a third-party with an Apple code signing certificate.