Language: English

ISSN: 1071-6246

Language: English

ISSN: 0010-700X

Abstract/Notes: This dissertation accounts for debates around correct American Muslim mothering in the 21st century. It centers around the following underlying questions: What advice do Muslim modernists and Sunni ʿulamāʾ offer to mothers for raising Muslims in the limited, privatized spaces of their nurseries, homes, and mosque communities? How do Muslim mothers who desire to rear children communally, in harmony with their fiṭra (innate nature) and according to traditional notions of tarbiya (development, education) accomplish this as religious minorities in a hyper capitalist, secular modern context? What are the different ways that mothers negotiate the ideas of Muslim advice-givers, which sometimes clash both internally and with the diverse opinions of American pediatricians, psychologists, and neuroscientists? This study considers the nuanced impact secular modernity, feminism, and the expanding authority of the medical and psy disciplines have had on American Muslim child-rearing practices, reconfigurations of gender roles in Muslim families and the intergenerational transmission of American Islam. To gauge this impact, this dissertation narrowly focuses on two highly contested decisions mothers make in early childhood: how to feed infants after birth and whether to corporally punish young children. The data for this project was collected from in-depth fieldwork interviews with a diverse sample of Muslim mothers conducted in 2017 in the city of Chicago and its surrounding suburbs. This data was analyzed by situating the types of religious and parenting education mothers had both received and sought out and by surveying the Islamic scriptural and jurisprudential texts, contemporary childrearing manuals, and social media sources that informed their child-rearing practices. This dissertation found that most mothers were much more likely to formula feed or breastfeed their infants themselves than allow other mothers to nurse their children. None of my interlocutors engaged wet nurses or used donated human milk for infant feeding. Additionally, most mothers disapproved of using corporal punishment for children’s discipline, either by themselves or others in loco parentis. Corporal punishment of children was increasingly viewed not as one method among many to cultivate children’s embodiment of ritual practices, but as child abuse. However, a minority of mothers demonstrated an openness to sharing milk and employing constrained forms of physical discipline in specific circumstances. In investigating the ever-shifting child-rearing advice from religious scholars (ʿulamāʾ), non-Muslim scientific experts, and a hybridized class of Muslim parent educators, this dissertation offers another avenue for understanding the fragmented nature of religious authority in American Muslim communities. It contributes to the growing body of scholarship that tracks the rising popularity of Sunnī rationalism and traditionalism by noting the way it attracts mothers who long for styles of parenting that are more shared and communal and less demanding and intensive. Finally, this dissertation affords insights into ongoing contestation over what constitutes correct, ethical tarbiya and how best to integrate and transmit American Islam

Language: English

Published: Chicago, Illinois, 2023

Language: English

ISSN: 0010-700X

Language: English

ISSN: 0010-700X

Language: English

ISSN: 0898-0926

Language: English

Abstract/Notes: "Faculty – The Montessori Institute — Dottoressa Maria Montessori and Assistants" ... "The Montessori Institute – During the month of July, San Diego is to receive and entertain as an honored guest of the city, the Exposition and the schools of the city, the famous Dottoressa Maria Montessori, who will bring for that month, her private class in Montessori methods now organized in Los Angeles, and which is not open to other Summer School students. In addition to this private class, there will be on the Exposition grounds, a Montessori demonstration school of children, which will be open for daily observation by all students registered for the summer session. Students will thus be able to get at first hand the Montessori methods and principles."

Language: English

Language: English

Published: New York, New York: American Montessori Society, 1963

Language: English

Published: Cincinnati, Ohio, 1977