Ecotheological Parenting from an Islamic Perspective in Early Childhood

Abstract

Environmental degradation in Indonesia keeps getting worse, yet the literature on Islamic parenting seldom connects Islamic teachings about nature to what parents do at home. This article builds a conceptual model of ecotheological parenting for children aged 0–8 years through a structured qualitative literature review. We searched Google Scholar, Scopus, and official institutional websites for Indonesian- and English-language sources published between 2016 and 2026, running the searches from 1 September to 15 October 2026. We screened sources in three stages against written inclusion and exclusion criteria and kept only those whose bibliographic identity we could verify. The final set contained 55 scholarly works (50 journal articles and 5 books or guidelines), two Islamic normative documents, and three contextual data sources. We coded the data thematically and compared designs, samples, and findings. Islamic sources offer a coherent theological foundation built on khalifah (stewardship), mizan (balance), and fitrah (innate disposition). Empirical studies of ecotheology in early childhood are few, school-based, small, and rarely measure outcomes. Psychological research links children's environmental behavior to parental behavior that children can observe. Most of its samples are non-Muslim, however, and longitudinal evidence supports the golden age argument in part. The proposed model has five components: ecological tawhid, the child's ecological fitrah, observable parental modeling, guided participation, and a Muslim ecological community. The model stays conceptual and needs empirical testing.