We know that a family of elliptic curves is a morphism of schemes $f:X \to Y$ such that the fiber of every point of $Y$ is an elliptic curve (and we usually require the morphism to be smooth, proper, etc).
Given such a family, we can take the $\ell$-adic representation associated to any given fiber, and in this sense we also have a "family" of Galois representations. (Alternatively, by the proper base change theorem in étale cohomology, we can take $R^1f_*(\mathbb{Z}_{\ell})$, which is a sheaf on $Y$, and the stalks of this sheaf are the duals of the above Galois representations).
Now consider different question. Can we have a "family" of cuspidal eigenforms whose associated Galois representations fit into a family in the above sense?
I'll consider the case of weight 2 (though I'm most interested in higher weight). Then such family should lead to a family of RM abelian varieties, i.e. those associated to the weight 2 cusp forms.
Let's go back to the elliptic curve (or abelian variety) side a bit, and think about what this would mean. The level of a modular form corresponds to the conductor of the associated elliptic curve, so the level of the modular forms in such a family should be just as bizarre a function of the base as is the conductor of a family of curves.
To try to engineer such a family, suppose we had a family of elliptic curves that were all known to be modular. I'm most interested in rational families, i.e. with open subsets of projective space as bases. Then if the family is defined over $\mathbb{Q}$, we at least know that the fibers of rational points are modular, and we get a "family" of modular forms over the rational points. What would this "family" look like? I have a feeling it would be pretty strange from the point of view of modular forms.
A different approach is to try to to construct a family of modular curves, then view a family of modular forms as a section of the relative cotangent sheaf or some power thereof. Maybe one could try to make it an "eigensection" of some sort of relative Hecke operators. Of course, the very idea of a family of modular curves seems strange, as there are countably-many modular curves!
In fact, this points to a general problem with this attempt: modular forms are based on discrete data, a discrete set of levels, and a discrete set of eigenforms within each level.
I have a feeling that it's impossible to make this notion work, but please let me know if you have good ideas. In particular, it's possible that experts in modular forms and curves would have more ideas.