The Death of Parenting?

Al-Farsi from MuslimSkeptic describing the death of parenting:

From the moment they are born, they are subjected to medical procedures, poked, bled, prodded, injected, and handled by uniformed strangers who usher them into their new life. At the tender age of three or four, they are torn from the loving embrace of their mothers, their lips barely dry from the final taste of their mother’s milk, and they are thrust into the cold hands of an education system.

They are herded onto school buses and taken to uniform, soulless rooms where their minds are molded by kuffar for eight hours a day—the very same spiritually dead people whose lives revolve around waiting to intoxicate themselves beyond cognition at the end of each and every week of their nihilistic, meaningless, purposeless existence.

Once, a son would walk in the footsteps of his father, learning a cherished, generational craft such as carpentry, acquiring not merely a trade but also a moral compass, shaped by the wisdom of seasoned elders.

Today, young minds spend eight hours a day in the company of their equally inexperienced peers, developing flawed moral notions and orientations. Is it any wonder then that our newspapers are replete with stories of young people committing acts of astounding cruelty, actions so monstrous in their nature that they defy the innocence of youth?

The home, once a sanctuary and a living, breathing citadel, has lost its essence, its soul. Within its walls, women once possessed the skills of nursing, midwifery, tailoring, cooking, counseling, and educating. In childbirth, they were surrounded by their kin, experienced in the arts of nurturing and delivery. A child’s first touch was the warm embrace of a loving relative, not the sterile glove of a complete stranger. But now, under the clinical, detached gaze of the obstetrician, childbirth is viewed not as a natural miracle but as a pathology.

From the home, women tended to both playground wounds and battle wounds. They possessed the skills to stitch flesh and cloth in equal measure.

The home, once the center of life’s great functions—birth, education, healing, and nurturing—, has been stripped of its purpose. These sacred duties have been siphoned off to the impersonal machinery of the state, an entity incapable of genuine care and concern.

Homes are no longer institutions. They are Airbnbs. Bodies may dwell within them as a place for eating and sleeping, but hearts dwell there no longer.

A powerful description of what is happening to our youth. My mother drove a school bus for a few years, and she is completely onboard with us homeschooling our children.

Al-Farsi continues to talk about the death of spiritual parenthood, where people would travel and be with a Shaykh for several years:

In the pre-modern world, a man lived with his shaykh, studied under him, and shared a contiguous period of life with him. A shaykh would take on only a handful of students, dedicating all his time, attention, and wisdom to these select few. He fed them, clothed them, and counseled them. From this intimate relationship emerged the great scholars of our tradition. Both a man and his wife would often be guided by the same shaykh (of course, while adhering to the dictates of the Shari’ah), under his spiritual tutelage and care.

Today, the modern madrasah system is but a pale imitation of post-industrial schooling, lacking the intimacy, the tarbiyah (nurturing), the tazkiyah (purification), and the islah (reform) that were once so central to the transmission of knowledge and virtue. The bond between teacher and student has become transactional, devoid of the deep personal connection that gave birth to our greatest scholars.

Although the ability to be with a Shaykh and spend years with him is more difficult, it is sad to see how parenting, which is the most natural student-teacher relationship, has become a shell of its former glory.

What your peers and friends say and do takes precedence over your parents advice, and parents easily give in without a fuss since, “everybody is doing it,” or because, “I just want my kid to be happy.”

Liberal tendencies.

The child is “in charge,” and the parent feels helpless, and they’re both miserable since no one is playing their role.

The end of the family unit is the end of a wholesome society.