Mothers’ duties

Mothers, who desire to see their sons be their future pleasure and relic, should work hard for educating the sons and overseeing their behaviors by sticking in their minds the good biases and the noble idealities.

1. Mothers should endear and encourage on every good conduct by referring to the successful outcomes.

2. Mothers should warn their children against any criminal and evil way and custom, and should warn them against the behaviors of any party that is incongruent to the religious and social habits. They should refer to the consequences of such things that are injurious for families, societies, and the children themselves.

3. Mothers should choose chastity and morality as the courses of educating their daughters whom should be guided to the qualities of the female exemplars. They should be warned against recklessness and being affected by the fashions of those women who are unaware of their chastity and dignity. Careful tutelage should be focused on daughters and their affairs so that they will not be polluted by the libertine conventions that, unfortunately, found their way to our Islamic societies, and invaded our people’s intellective and doctrinal lives. Daughters are usually more obedient -to their mothers- than sons. They are always in need of their mothers. Hence, mothers should maintain, manage, and train them on housekeeping. They should also make them perceive the life’s liabilities so that they will fulfill their duties in the future and become the good mothers of other generations.

4. Mothers should not exceed in pampering their children in order to avoid the disadvantages that contribute in the retardation of education and the future unbecomingness.

5. Mothers should attract their sons’ attentions to the high standards of their fathers. They should insist on reverencing and respecting them. This will improve the fathers’ roles in disciplining the deviate and leading to the good behavior.

6. Mothers should never contend their husbands since this creates an aspect of mutual malice and hatred. Consequently, such matters may lead to the children’s disorder and anxiety as well as other mental complexes. Islam has urged women on pleasing the husbands and neglecting any matter that may enrage them. The Prophet (s) is reported to say, “Allah will not accept any dissuasion, remuneration or good deed of the wives unless they satisfy their husbands.” “Wives, who mistreat and burden their husbands with arduous and unbearable things, will not be rewarded for their good deeds, and God will come upon in ire.” “Wives will not fulfill God’s rights before they fulfill their husbands’.” Imam Abu Jafar says, “The deeds of wives, who address at their husbands that they did not see any good from them, will be come to nothing.”.

Muslim wives are asked to satisfy, appease, and comply with their husbands in addition to avoid whatsoever may disturb them. This is the only way of saving good education for their children.

7. Mothers should inform the paterfamiliases of every aberrant deed they may notice on their sons’ behaviors. Fathers’ turn then is disciplining and guiding the sons to the correct path. Mothers should never cover up such deeds lest sons will have motives to keep up the incorrect manners. Mothers are also asked not to make objections to fathers’ disciplinary punishments lest sons’ rebel and corruption may increase.

8. Mothers should protect their sons from the streets that are full of seductive matters and motives of antisocial behaviors. Nowadays, streets are including, to excess, the aberrant ones and those who are morally affected and the source of children’s being polluted and dragged to junkyards of immoralities and serious offenses.

9. Mothers should deprive their sons of any cause or method that may injure chastity and purity, or collapse the morals and ethics, such as sexy books, novels and cinemas, nightclubs and the like. Such sources of seductive media draggle to the lowest levels of whoredom and insolence.

10. Mothers should conserve chastity and good behaviors. They should never display their charms and cast their screens. They should keep up the Islamic conducts so that they would be the good exemplars of their sons in fields of chastity and noble descent. Finally, they should elude any matter that may arouse the cravings and corrupt the moralities.

Honest matrimonial relation creates the precious emotions of the husband and incites him to believe perfectly that he should prefer his sons and wife to his own interests. Dishonest relations, on the other hand, eradicate the husbands’ jealousy to their wives and smash any cerebral motive to bring up their sons honestly or care for saving good life for them. This grand disaster affects mankind. Moral corruption of the young is one of the consequences of that disaster. Sons who lack familiarity with affectionate fathers who care for them will most surely opt for immorality. Indeed, death of emotions leads to death of humanity.

Adapted from the book: "The Educational System in Islam" by: "Baqir Sharif Al-Qireshi"