When did we start thinking of pirates as family friendly ?

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Firstly, you might be interested in this compilation post of mine about how pirate tropes correspond to historical reality.

But as to the specific question, it depends what you mean by family friendly and nice guys, since even today I wouldn't say pirates are usually portrayed completely as "nice guys." Even Jack Sparrow is kind of an anti-hero who ostensibly has some nefarious agendas and I'd say that's a big part of what appeals to people about him. But when did pirates start being portrayed as something at least palatable rather than purely murderous villains? That seems to have begun at the very time that they were still active. Pirates have been romanticized in books and plays and songs since the beginning, even while they were still being portrayed in a darker light in other contexts. Things were never black and white and they still aren't.

I see a lot of removed comments here comparing pirates to terrorists and Nazis and regular psychopathic murderers who aren't generally romanticized in modern society and wondering how pirates could possibly be portrayed so comparatively nicely if they were once viewed like that, but I don't think that's necessarily a good comparison. Pirates were certainly violent criminals who did torture and rape and do other horrible things but they weren't usually overtly political (and when they did make political references they tended to talk vaguely about opposing government oppression and such, stuff many could sympathize with) and they weren't doing it purely for sadism. Those are the main reasons I think comparisons to terrorists/Nazis and psychopaths are misleading. I hesitate to make modern comparisons, but the romanticization of pirates at the time was I think something more akin to 19th century Old West gunslingers and 20th century gangsters and maybe some modern political figures and revolutionaries who aren't seen as unequivocally bad. I'm not an expert on these topics, but a lot of 19th gunslingers were just murderers and thugs, and yet there were lots of popular dime novels and ballads romanticizing the former Confederate guerrilla and vicious bank robber/murderer Jesse James as a Robin Hood-type figure even long before he was killed. Same with 20th century gangsters, from Bonny and Clyde onward, to anti-heros like Michael Corleone and Tony Montana. Even when gangsters are shown to be deeply flawed as they often are like Tony Soprano, they're not always portrayed as completely bad and the viewer often roots for them. I don't want to get political, but another comparison might be some political revolutionaries. Most people don't think communism was very good but they still might think Che Guevara was pretty awesome for the things he did and his persona, even though they might have heard somewhere else that he was also very violent and ruthless.

One of the first major contemporary accounts of piracy was Alexandre Exquemelin's The Buccaneers of America published in Dutch in 1678 and quickly translated into English, French and German in numerous other editions and reprintings. In other words, the book was very popular. But this book did not really portray pirates in a romantic light even though its author Exquemelin had himself been a former buccaneer. Instead, nearly every buccaneer captain is described as almost unbelievably murderous and bloodthirsty, and the buccaneers routinely commit rape and other atrocities, and torture their victims in horrendous ways to make them reveal where they've hidden their valuables. The portrayals in this book were so nasty that Henry Morgan who is one of the most prominent buccaneers described in the book, and who Exquemelin claimed to have actually served under and witnessed first-hand, sued the English publishers for libel and won because by this time he had managed to get himself pardoned by Charles II of England and actually knighted, even though he was very clearly guilty of piracy.

So The Buccaneers of America was generally a very unromantic portrayal, but even in that same book you can see the foundations of many pirate tropes and some romantic elements. The buccaneers are portrayed as working together and helping each other in a sort of "brotherhood" (although the term "Brotherhood of the Coast" seems to be a later invention) and they have a sort of democratic system of government. One buccaneer named Pierre le Grand discussed in the book captures a much larger Spanish galleon and crew using only a small boat with a few dozen men before retiring safely to France with his stolen wealth. He isn't said to have done anything very nasty either, and that is a pretty romantic image.

A few decades after The Buccaneers of America was published, the famous English pirate Henry Avery captured a wealthy Indian Mughal ship in the Indian Ocean in 1695 and then disappeared never to be heard from gain, perhaps a bit like Pierre le Grand had done some sixty years earlier. The darker side to his exploits were that he and his crew are reported to have raped most of the female passengers aboard the Mughal ship when they captured it. Despite this, popular ballads and stories about Avery almost immediately surfaced, some of which were of a somewhat romantic nature, portraying him as a daring and dashing anti-hero type rather than simply a dastardly villain. These are some excerpts from a ballad called A Copy of Verses, Composed by Captain Henry Every, Lately Gone to Sea to seek his Fortune published circa 1696 and reportedly written by Avery himself (although this is certainly not true):

Come all you brave Boys, whose Courage is bold,

Will you venture with me, I'll glut you with Gold?

Make haste unto Corona, a Ship you will find,

That's called the Fancy, will pleasure your mind.

...

My Commission is large, and I made it my self,

And the Capston shall stretch it full larger by half;

It was dated in Corona, believe it, my Friend,

From the Year Ninety three, unto the World's end.

...

Four Chiviligies of Gold in a bloody Field,

Environ'd with green, now this is my Shield;

Yet call out for Quarter, before you do see

A bloody Flag out, which our Decree,

.

No Quarters to give, no Quarters to take,

We save nothing living, alas 'tis too late;

For we are now sworn by the Bread and the Wine,

More serious we are than any Divine.

.

Now this is the Course I intend for to steer;

My false-hearted Nation, to you I declare,

I have done thee no wrong, thou must me forgive,

The Sword shall maintain me as long as I live.

From this you can see that Avery is portrayed as basically a romantic desperado singlehandedly going up against the world to make his fortune and avenge some supposed wrong that was done to him. It has almost every cliche of a swashbuckling Errol Flynn blockbuster of classic Hollywood and yet it was actually written in 1696.