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Questions to ask

100 questions to ask your parents about their life

Written by Amanda Yaffe-Parker

A full list you can use as it is, grouped so you can pick the part that suits the mood you are both in. Plus what to do when an answer comes back short.

Start with one specific question rather than a general one. "What did your kitchen smell like on a Sunday?" gets a real answer far more often than "tell me about your childhood" does. The 100 questions below are grouped into nine themes. You are not meant to ask them all. Choose five or six from one theme, ask them properly, and let the conversation go where it wants to.

Before you start

Three things make more difference than the questions themselves.

Ask permission, plainly. “I would like to record this, so I do not have to scribble notes. Is that all right?” People almost always say yes, and being asked changes how seriously they take it.

Ask one question at a time. A double question gets a half answer. If you ask “where did you grow up and what was it like?”, you will get the postcode.

Let the silence sit. The three seconds after someone finishes a sentence is where the better half of the answer usually lives. If you fill it, you lose it.

Where they came from

  1. What is your first memory, the very first one?
  2. What was the address of the house you grew up in, and can you walk me through the front door?
  3. Who else lived in that house?
  4. What did it smell like on a Sunday?
  5. Where did you sleep, and who with?
  6. Was it warm? How was it heated?
  7. What did your mother do all day?
  8. What did your father do for work, and did you understand what it was?
  9. What did your parents argue about?
  10. Which of your parents were you more like?
  11. What did you call your grandparents, and what do you remember about them?
  12. Who was the character in the family, the one everyone talked about?
  13. Was there money? How did you know?
  14. What was the street like, and who else lived on it?
  15. What happened on the day you left that house for good?

School and being young

  1. What was the name of your first school, and who took you on the first day?
  2. Which teacher do you still think about?
  3. What were you good at, and what were you hopeless at?
  4. Were you ever in trouble? What for?
  5. Who was your best friend at eleven, and what happened to them?
  6. What did you do after school, before you were called in?
  7. What was the first record or song you bought or loved?
  8. What did you wear when you wanted to look good?
  9. What did you want to be, and who put that idea in your head?
  10. When did you first feel grown up?
  11. What was the first thing you ever bought with your own money?
  12. Did you have a bike, a dog, a den, a hiding place?

Work

  1. What was your first job, and what did it pay?
  2. What did you do on the first morning?
  3. Who trained you, and were they kind about it?
  4. What did the place look, sound and smell like?
  5. What was the hardest part of the job that nobody outside would know about?
  6. Who did you eat your lunch with?
  7. Was there anyone there you were slightly afraid of?
  8. What was the best day you had at work?
  9. Did you ever walk out, or nearly?
  10. What changed in your trade over the years you did it?
  11. What are you actually good at that you were never given credit for?
  12. When did you stop, and how did that feel?

Love

  1. Who was the first person you liked, properly?
  2. Where did you and Mum or Dad meet, and what were you both wearing?
  3. What did you think when you first saw them?
  4. What did you do on the first date, and who paid?
  5. Who said it first?
  6. Did your parents approve?
  7. How did you ask, or how were you asked?
  8. What do you remember about the wedding day that is not in the photographs?
  9. Where did you go afterwards, and what did you live on?
  10. What was the first home the two of you had?
  11. What has kept it going, honestly?

Being a parent

  1. Where were you when you found out I was coming?
  2. What do you remember about the day I was born?
  3. Who chose my name, and what else was on the list?
  4. Who did I look like?
  5. What was I like as a small child, before I could argue back?
  6. What did you find hardest about having young children?
  7. What did you worry about that I never knew about?
  8. What do you think you got right?
  9. What would you do differently?
  10. When did you stop thinking of me as a child?

The hard parts

Ask these only if the room is right for them, and be ready to move on if it is not.

  1. What is the hardest year you have lived through?
  2. Who did you lose that you still think about?
  3. What got you through it?
  4. Was there a time you were frightened?
  5. Did you ever have no money at all? What did you do?
  6. Is there anything you have never told anyone?
  7. Who did you fall out with, and is it mended?
  8. What do you wish you had said to someone, and to whom?

The texture of the everyday

These are the ones people skip, and they are the ones that bring a story to life.

  1. What did you eat on a normal Tuesday?
  2. Who cooked, and what were they known for?
  3. What was the shopping like, and where did you go for it?
  4. What was on the wireless or the television, and who chose?
  5. Where did you go on holiday, and how did you get there?
  6. What did you do on a Saturday night?
  7. What did a pint, a loaf or a pair of shoes cost?
  8. What did you drive, or how did you get about?
  9. Which neighbour would you still recognise in the street?
  10. What was Christmas like in your house?
  11. Did you smoke? When did you stop?
  12. What was the first telephone, television or washing machine you had?

What they believe

  1. What do you believe now that you did not believe at thirty?
  2. Where does your sense of right and wrong come from?
  3. Have you ever changed your mind about something big?
  4. What are you proud of that has nothing to do with work or family?
  5. What do you think people get wrong about you?
  6. What makes you laugh, reliably?
  7. Who has been the best friend of your life?
  8. What has been the best decade, and why that one?
  9. What advice did you get that turned out to be wrong?
  10. What would you tell yourself at twenty-five?

Us, and what comes after

  1. What do you want the grandchildren to know about you?
  2. Is there a story about our family that you think will be lost?
  3. Which object in this house has a story behind it?
  4. Where did that photograph on the wall get taken, and who is in it?
  5. Is there anyone I should be in touch with that I am not?
  6. What do you want said about you?
  7. Is there anything you want me to stop worrying about?
  8. What have I never asked you that you always expected me to?
  9. What should I ask you next time?
  10. Is there anything you would like to say, while this is recording?

When an answer comes back short

“I don’t know” and “it was just normal” are not refusals. They usually mean the question was too big, or that nobody has ever been interested before and the habit of not saying takes a while to break.

Three things that work:

  • Go smaller. Swap “what was school like?” for “who sat next to you?”
  • Go sideways through an object. A photograph, a medal, a recipe, a tool, a piece of jewellery. Put it in their hands and ask what it is. People who will not talk about themselves will happily talk about a thing.
  • Ask what someone else did. “What was your mother like when she was cross?” is easier to answer than “what were you like?”, and the answer is usually about them anyway.

If none of that shifts it, stop and make a cup of tea. The question that gets nothing today often gets ten minutes next week.

What to do with it afterwards

Two practical things, the same day if you can.

Label the file with the date and who is on it, and move it off the phone. A recording called “New Recording 47” is a recording nobody will ever find again.

Then write down, in a couple of lines, what you did not ask. That list is what you start with next time, and it is usually better than any list you could find online, including this one.

Where to go next

If you would rather someone else asked the questions, recorded the answers and wrote them up properly, that is what I do.

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