Lesson: ONE
Learning Outcome
By the end of this session, the student will be able to:
1) Identify the importance of family in one’s life and development;
2) Analyze the main conditions for a good parenting and education within the family;
3) Realize the need for parenting skills and family management in one’s life and development.
Main Topics/Issues/ Points
1) Family: importance and function in building a balanced personality.
2) Tarbiyah and Parenting
o Conducive environment
o Dedicated parents
o Systematic and gradual process
o Knowledge and virtue
o Between ideal and reality.
Discussions: Main Ideas
Meaning of Family
· Family is the basic unit that makes the social fabric of any community.
· In general terms family is made up of husband, wife, children and the close relatives.
· Family provides the necessary conditions and environment for the education of children and development of family members.
· Family is a network that links parents, children, relatives and others in a strong bond characterized the sense of responsibility and cooperation.
· A Special kind of structure whose principles are related to one another through blood ties and/or marital relationships, and whose relatedness is of such nature as to entail mutual expectations that are prescribed by religion, reinforced by law, and internalized by the individual. (Quoted in: Hammudah Abd al Ati, The Family Structure in Islam).
Meaning of Family Management
It is the processes, ways, approaches and activities undertaken by parents and family members to mange the family and guide its development from the very early stages of its construction. The management of the family includes, among others, the following aspects:
1- Marriage and communication in family 2- Family problems
3- Education and raising up of children 4- Religious education enhancement
5- Health and life style enhancement 6- Financial and material matters
7- Family relations and networks 8- Family roles and functions in society
9- Protection of family members from all sorts of harms.
Meaning of Parenting
The various skills, techniques, values, principles and ways followed by parents to ensure, among others:
1- Proper planning of the family’s objectives and resources;
2- Proper relations among the family members and the outside world;
3- Proper raising up of children;
4- Effective communication in family;
5- Dynamic and positive environment for spiritual, intellectual; psychological, emotional, moral, ethical, behavioural, physical, social and cultural development of parents and children as well;
Efficient solving of children’s problems and discipline and
6- Proper integration, socialization and participation in self and community development.
7- Just and fair practice and protection of rights and duties of each and every family member.
Roles and Functions of Family
The family is responsible, among others, for:
1. Shaping well-round and holistic personality. The following aspects of personality are essential:
1- Religious and worldview 2- Spiritual.
3- Psychological and emotional 4- Intellectual and cognitive.
5- Moral and ethical 6- Character and behavioral.
7- Cultural and aesthetical 8- Social and civilizational.
9- Physical 10- Material.
2. Establishing and enhancing the proper environment for education, integration and socialization.
3. Encouraging stability, security, tranquility, love, mutual understanding, and sense of responsibility among the family members.
4. Protecting the family members and preserving them from all sorts of religious, moral, ethical and behavioural deviations.
5. Family contribution to society and Ummah.
6. Supervising children activities and monitoring the processes of integrating children into the community and assisting them to play their role.
7. Providing the emotional and psychological support to the children so as to allow the balanced process of personality nurturing to take place.
8. Providing the necessary means and resources for the members to ensure the satisfaction of their needs and requirement in each and every stage of their development.
9. Disseminating the values of tolerance, Ihasan, kindness, trustworthiness, respect, justice, equality, cooperation …etc within the parameters of the family and without.
Importance of Family Management and Parenting
Family management and parenting help us to enhance:
| Responsibility | Skill/ability | Process | Vision | Mission |
| Assist us to understand and learn our responsibility with regard to ourselves and our children and family members. | Provide us with the skills and abilities that we need for the building of a family, raising up of children and improving our efficiency in handling family issue. | Help us understand family relations and activities through gradual and step by step approach. | Empowers us with a vision as parents, children and family builders. It creates in us the sense of vision and empowers us through enhancing the meaning of a parent and family. | Instills in us the sense of mission and reflect the crucial role of family in our life as well as the urgency of carrying out our mission and tasks of parenting. |
| Education | Collective effort | Values and Moralities | Style of life | Conflict management and creativity |
| Show the essential role of educating the children and building their wholesome personality. | Provides an example of collective efforts and cooperation for the betterment of the self, children and family. | Reflects the importance of values ethics and moralities in personality building and raising up of children | Encourages us to improve our style of life and posses the dynamic an positive approach to life and family. | Provide us with ways on how to handle conflicts and problems in family as well as how to become creative parents, children and family members. |
Selected Quotations
Evidences from Qur’Én
· O mankind! reverence your Guardian-Lord, who created you from a single person, created, of like nature, His mate, and from them twain scattered (like seeds) countless men and women;- reverence Allah, through whom ye demand your mutual (rights), and (reverence) the wombs (That bore you): for Allah ever watches over you. (Q: 4: 1).
· Help ye one another in righteousness and piety, but help ye not one another in sin and rancour: fear Allah. for Allah is strict in punishment (Q: 5: 2).
· Permitted to you, on the night of the fasts, is the approach to your wives. They are your garments and ye are their garments. Allah knoweth what ye used to do secretly among yourselves; but He turned to you and forgave you; so now associate with them, and seek what Allah. (Q: 2: 187).
· And Allah has made for you mates (and companions) of your own nature, and made for you, out of them, sons and daughters and grandchildren, and provided for you sustenance of the best: will they then believe in vain things, and be ungrateful for Allah’s favours?-. (Q: 16: 72).
· And among His Signs is this, that He created for you mates from among yourselves, that ye may dwell in tranquility with them, and He has put love and mercy between your (hearts): verily in that are Signs for those who reflect. (Q: 30: 21).
· And those who pray, "Our Lord! Grant unto us wives and offspring who will be the comfort of our eyes, and give us (the grace) to lead the righteous."(Q: 25: 74).
· O ye who believe! Ye are forbidden to inherit women against their will. Nor should ye treat them with harshness, that ye may Take away part of the dower ye have given them,-except where they have been guilty of open lewdness; on the contrary live with them on a footing of kindness and equity. If ye take a dislike to them it may be that ye dislike a thing, and Allah brings about through it a great deal of good.(Q: 4: 19).
Evidences from the Sunnah of the Prophet (P.B.U.H)
· The best of you are those who are best to his family, and I am the best of you towards my family. (AÎ-ØaÍÊah, no. 285).
· The believers who are most complete in faith are those of best manners; and the best among them are those who are best in treatment to their women. (AÎ-ØaÍÊah, no. 284).
· Indeed, Allah commands you to be good to the women; indeed, they are your mothers, daughters, and maternal aunts.
Translation of Selected Arabic Terms
Comprehension Questions
1) What do you understand by Family management and parenting?
2) Why is family management and parenting important?
3) Identify the roles and functions of Family in one’s life.
4) What are the main aspects of a wholesome personality?
5) Do you think that learning family management and parenting skills considered as some thing important in one’s life?
Selected Readings
Darlene Powell Hopson and Drek S. Hopson, Team-Spirited Parenting: 8 Essential Principles for Parenting Success (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2001).
Muhammad Al-Jibali, the Quest for Love and Mercy in Islam (Beirut: Al-Kitaab and Suunah Publishing, 2000) Book 1, Book2, Book 4.
Hammudah Abd al Ati, The Family Structure in Islam (USA: American Trust Publications, 1995).
