The purpose of this paper is to discuss how the Soninke familyadapts to the socio-economic conditions surrounding their society by payingspecial attention to family size and structures.The Soninke society along the Senegal valley has been placed outsidethe main stream of development policies adopted by the centralgovernment since the colonial period. This is a major reason why twentyto thirty percent of one village have been forced to emigrate toFrance. Almost all the emigrants are male, and they live in Francewithout wife and children. Remittances from the emigrants are used notonly for the expenditures needed to sustain the daily life of the family butalso for the common expenditures needed for community developmentin the village. Today, emigration has become essential for the Soninkepeople to live on in such a depressed region.The migration observed in Soninke society has been maintained bylarge families and their ties. Simultaneously, it is confirmed that familystructures are adversely influenced by the migration itself. The migrationto France, with its completely different customs and culture, cannotcontinue without the cohesion of the emigrants. It is observed that thetraditional age systems and class relationships seen in the village arebrought into France. On the other hand, it is confirmed that the statusof head of family has been gradually enforced due to continuous migration.The patriarchal system seen in Soninke society becomes a majorelement in producing families of twenty two point four (22.4) personson average, as surveyed at the village of Gande. When the actualconditions of the large families are clarified, using the three basic comp"of nents of "compound (concession) ", "household (menage) " and amily nucleus (noyau familial) ", the following five family types arerevealed, namely;1. mononuclear family, : a couple + single lineal descendants(+ a lineal ascendant +other single relatives),2. expanded mononuclear family, : 1 + at least one single collateralrelative,3. polynuclear family,: 1 + at least one family nucleusof lineal relatives,4. collateral polynuclear family, : 1 + at least one family nucleusof collateral relatives,5. expanded polynuclear family, : 3 + 4.It is observed that the emigrants come from comparatively largefamilies, e.g. collateral polynuclear family or expanded polynuclear family,and that in such large families there is a tendency for the average ageof the head to be high, and further, that those families often belong to alower social class.The members of a large family live in the village and the place wherethey emigrate, and their relations are formed as strong ties among thefamily members. However, this kind of family is not the traditional andtypical one seen in Soninke society in the past. Rather, it must be saidthat it has been newly formed by contemporary socio-economic conditions.In addition to this, with respect to changes in family structures inthe future, the most interesting thing to observe will be changes in theeconomic and social power of men in the family. It is, in short, to bedetermined by the power relations between the head of a family and theemigrants.