ABSTRACT
When a woman becomes a mother, the changed status confers a great amount of responsibility. This is particularly important for families that value faith-based nurturing and want to ensure that their children grow up with specific beliefs, values and traditions that are important for faith development and generational continuity. For Muslim parents, the task of raising children poses particular challenges in Muslim minority countries. Parents have to make particular choices about how to engage with mainstream culture and how to package Islamic beliefs and practice for early socialisation of their children. Taking into account the dominant role of Muslim women in raising children, it is important to gain insight into their socially constructed experiences as mothers. The authoritative knowledge base, the tacit assumptions, the idealised goals need to be made explicit to understand the rationales and practices that guide Muslim mothers in constructing early childhood education. This is particularly important since it is a departure from conventional frameworks that are used to interpret the work of mothers in shaping early childhood education.
