Muslim Mothering and Migration

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to review literature that provides insight on how immigrant Muslim mothers raise their children. In this article we acknowledge Muslim mothers’ struggle to maintain and transmit their religious values and cultural traditions to their children. We begin the article with an overview of parenthood practices as they are illustrated in the religious writings of Islam, from the Qur’an and the Hadith. We then discuss how mothers’ traditional values, specifically regarding parenting practices, are shaped by their culture of origin and by Islam as religion and a way of life. Finally, we discuss how these values together (the religious and cultural) with the acculturation or the effect of the dominant new culture may shape the parenting practices of immigrant Muslim mothers in the United States. A conceptual model using these constructs and their relationship to parenting practices of immigrant Muslim mothers is presented in appendix A.