Drawing on two research projects conducted in Ile-de-France between 2007-2018, I examine how state policies, the public health system, and social services•especially the intervention of social workers in intimate lives of immigrant families•underlie conflicts between spouses and their respective kin, potentially leading to abandonment, divorce, or imprisonment. Male labor migrants from the Senegal River Valley region in West Africa constituted an important sector of the French workforce after World War II. In 1976, documented foreigners became eligible to request reunification with their spouse and children, to experience a “normal” family life in France. Yet an influx of women and children between 1980 and the present generated marital conflict related to the perceived failure of wives and husbands to fulfil kinship obligations. From the perspective of men interviewed for this study, France favors the rights of women, denying men’s rights as household heads. Men contended that women should ask permission before leaving the house, choose friends acceptable to their husband, and defer to the husband’s notions of appropriate childrearing and childbearing. They alleged that their wives falsely report them for abusive acts in order to obtain housing and financial support from the state and deny husbands the right to follow the Qur’an and “correct” their wives and children’s misbehavior. In contrast, women described the restrictive expectations of their husbands, lack of financial support, burdensome obligations to in-laws, and unwelcome efforts to recreate the idealized Muslim wife of rural West Africa. Transnational communications with kin in West Africa shape these marital tensions.