Presenting New Construction on Mothering to Indonesian Muslim Millennial Generation through Islamic Books

Discourse on mothering remains central in Muslim society including in Indonesia. Mother is assumed to be the one who responsible for the good attitude and success of her children. This assumption, in the mind of many Muslim people, needs to be sustained, even though many Muslim mothers are now active in public activities. This paper aims to look at discourse on mothering offered by authors of ten Islamic books published in Indonesia. The authors of the ten books offer new construction on mothering not really on the issue they raise but more to the strategies they use. Their opinions are on the contrary to many feminists’ perspectives that believe mothering is a socially constructed task, not a merely biological issue. Therefore, anyone can do mothering. Applying ethnographical textual analysis, I raise some questions to these books: what do these authors say about the role of mother? Do they offer certain tips or advice on how to be good mothers? What Islamic texts do they use to strengthen their arguments? In my view the publications of these books are in line with the rise of conservatism within Indonesian Muslims, to bring back Muslim women to what they perceived as the appropriate way to do mothering. Millennial female Muslim generations are basically the targets of these authors.