1.2 Goals and Objectives

If there is a consensus on the importance of parental education in Muslim societies and its vital role in teaching the child life principles and basic rules, its essential aim lies in the two following aspects :

1.2.1 The Opening up of his Personality

The first thing that a child needs in the early period of his life is security which is the prerequisite of any emotional development. The fact that a child lives in  an evolutionary process into which he plunges results in his being assaulted by various inner instincts and outside influences which prevent him from having confidence, neither in himself nor in his human and physical environments. Therefore, without the intervention of the parents to reassure and help him, he will fall prey to fear and anxiety, especially that he is fully aware of the fact that he cannot cope with life on his own. It is this sense of security which starts with the child from the moment his mother satisfies his primary desires and develops according to the rhythm  of recurrent situations and circumstances that largely contributes to the constitution and arrangement of his primary impressions. According to some researchers, this feeling rests on four fundamental components (Hassan 1970, Wery 1974).

a) The satisfaction of the primary desires which differ according to family environment and the financial situation of the parents, since these desires are of biological origins. What all this involves is the achievement of a well-balanced health, as one of the primary objectives for a child, because we cannot ignore the importance of healthy food, clean accommodation, necessary prevention and required medical care.

b) Safeguarding the child from outside harms, for the parents play a disciplinary role in opposite directions in normal conditions :

On the one hand, the parents are responsible for cushioning the strong blows and acute shocks that their child receives from his external environment; on the other hand, they have to enable him to communicate with the world  and know how to live according to a growing rhythm. If the parents' double role diminishes with the development of the child till it completely disappears around adolescence, there is a possibility that the parents commit errors of evaluation through either indifference or exaggeration with respect to defending the child (negligence versus over-protection).

c) Insuring for the child's development a stable and coherent framework, by controlling his conduct and providing him with a clear frame of reference so that he  can distinguish between what is right and wrong, positive and negative, permissible and forbidden, etc.

d) Showing the child that he is desired by satisfying his emotional needs instead of staying at the level of the biological ones. On the one hand, the child is in need of these practices so as to feel that he is wanted by his parents; on the other hand, he badly needs to have some margin of freedom so as to achieve his independence later.

It is by the focus of parental education on these four components that the child acquires that sense of security which is considered as the prerequisite of his psychological equilibrium, the very guarantee that will save him from falling prey to any kind of disturbance in the future.

1.2.2 Social Adaptation

Undoubtedly, the family does not only constitute that emotional environment which insures the child's psychological openness and the emancipation of his personality, but it is also that social environment where a huge number of relationships and practices interact. It is with this second dimension of family environment that the child discovers the rules of communication with the other, becomes aware of his freedom and its limits, distinguishes between rights and duties, possible and forbidden acts, and grasps the spirit of competition and solidarity, along with the nature of values specific to his social group. So the capacity for social adjustment also develops from the proportional appreciation of two opposing forces. On the one hand, there is the exclusive life value drive of the ego which grows and expands toward breaking all barriers; on the other hand, there is the oppressive force of the super ego which pushes the parents to curtail this expansion-either consciously or unconsciously. The existing balance between these two forces, a balance which constitutes the base of all parental educations, shapes the final conduct of the child. It is with this conduct that a child becomes a social being as long as his parents provide him with "a healthy social environment where stability prevails and which allows teaching him the love of others and a lot of values, traditions and attitudes that indicate tolerance or fanaticism"(Hassan 1970, p.144).

However, a distinction can be made in this respect among four typical formulations pertaining to the intervention of the parents in trying to ensure a child's social integration :

- self-discipline, that is to enable the child to determine his goals.

- adjustment to social conventions and laws.

- cooperation with the others.

- sensitivity. 

To turn these four formulations into social goals the parents should take the following four steps of pedagogical stimulation and induction : control and incitement, moralising and emotional relationship, all of which can be observed in four sectors vital to the education of a child and his social integration.

The first sector involves teaching the child the skills of reading, writing, drawing, etc.

The second sector concerns teaching the child the moral values and required standards necessary for the management of life in society, such as the provisions governing the licit and the illicit, the concepts of justice, truthfulness, uprightness, fairness, good, evil, permissible and forbidden, etc.

The third sector consists in teaching the child the values and customs of interaction with all the skills of having relationships, with others, the rules of dialogue and ethics and finally the skill of life.

The fourth sector involves teaching the child the methods of representing the self and the building of social identity, especially on the level of the image of the body and clothes (Allès-Jardel 1997).

However, the child's social adaptation according to these formulations and patterns is still, in the Muslim world, a domain where human studies and researches in general and the psychological ones in particular have not intervened yet, in spite of their scientific importance and practical value.