Acculturation, Parenting Practices and the Transmission of Cultural and Religious Values in Muslim Immigrant Families

Acculturation is a complex and dynamic process associated with various difficulties and challenges that play a major role in raising children. This is especially true for Muslim immigrant families where instilling traditional values and a strong sense of ethnic and religious identity is a primary aspect of the parenting process. This study addresses the process of cultural negotiation undertaken by immigrant Muslim parents and analyses how it affects their children's education and parenting practices. Eleven Muslim immigrant adults with children, settled in Italy from an average of 25 years (F= 9; mean age= 48) participated to a semi-structured interview about their experiences of raising their children in relation to their origins and Italian culture. Atlas-ti was used for thematic analysis. The results showed that the educational role of parents in these families is challenged by the difficulty of finding a match between the traditional model of education and the mainstream model. This difficulty intertwines with the one related to the need to reconcile different needs, namely, the need to preserve and transmit religious and cultural values, and the need to adapt to the values that they and their children learn through interaction with the plural society. In response to this challenge, parents seem to prefer separation as an acculturation strategy, in terms of the content of traditional and religious values, while maintaining a negotiating space for these values. Instead, in teaching these values, they have moved increasingly closer to the Italian model of parenting, which is based on flexibility and dialogue, thus adopting integration in the field of parenting strategies. This research was the preliminary phase of an intervention project aimed at empowering the Islamic community of Turin, Italy, to support families in practicing intentional parenting in order to address the challenges related to the migratory context. In other words, to promote the acquisition of parenting skills that can meet both children's identity needs and parents' needs for appreciation and cultural transmission, and also prevent problems and psychological distress caused by cultural conflicts. It emerged from both the research and the intervention project that the need to develop a model of "parenting in migration" is shared by the entire Muslim community and requires a collective and collaborative effort to promote this process by creating spaces for discussion and by activating the resources available in the community that can guide and accompany parents in difficulty in their educational role, creating synergies with the services offered by the territory.