Questions to Ask Elderly About Their Life
Questions for recording an older person's life story over one or more sittings. They run roughly in order, from the house they grew up in through school, first work, and marriage, to the beliefs that changed and what they would want written down for people they will never meet.
The questions
Open any question for the note
Where were you born, and how long did the family stay there?
Why ask it
This anchors everything that follows to a place and a date, which you will need later when you try to work out what year a story belongs to. Moves also tend to mark the family's turning points, so a list of addresses often doubles as a list of upheavals.
Who was in the house when you were small, and who was in charge?
Why ask it
Households were often larger and less tidy than family trees suggest, with lodgers, grandparents, or a cousin staying for a year. Naming who held authority explains a great deal about how they were raised before you ask about it directly.
What did your parents do for a living, and did you have to help?
Why ask it
Children in working households often had real duties, and describing them usually produces more detail than a question about childhood in general. It also tells you what the family's money depended on and how fragile that was.
What do you remember about starting school?
Why ask it
First days are unusually well preserved: the walk, the smell of the room, the name of a teacher. Ask what happened at the end of the school day too, because that is where the unsupervised part of childhood lived.
What did the place look like then, and what has gone from it since?
Why ask it
The second half invites them to be a witness rather than a subject, which many people find easier. Answers give you shops, factories, and streets you can look up and use as prompts in the next session.
What did you and your friends do when nothing was arranged for you?
Why ask it
Unsupervised play produces the stories that never got told to parents, including the dangerous ones. It also captures how much freedom a child had then, which is one of the sharpest contrasts with childhood now.
How much money did your family have, and did you know it at the time?
Why ask it
The gap between the reality and what the child understood is the interesting part, and asking it this way makes the question answerable without embarrassment. Expect careful phrasing, because many people learned early not to discuss this.
What was the first work you were paid for, and what did they pay you?
Why ask it
The figure fixes the story in time and often prompts them to compare it with what things cost. First jobs also reveal how education ended, which is frequently a decision made by someone else.
Was there a teacher, employer, or neighbour who changed the direction you took?
Why ask it
People rarely volunteer these names, but almost everyone has one. What you get is the moment a life turned, and often a debt they have never had the chance to acknowledge out loud.
How did you meet the person you settled down with, and what was the first year like?
Why ask it
The meeting is usually a polished anecdote, so the value is in the first year: where they lived, what they could not afford, who disapproved. That part is rarely told to children and grandchildren.
What did an ordinary Saturday night look like when you were twenty?
Why ask it
Asking about the ordinary rather than the memorable gets you dance halls, kitchen tables, shift work, and radio, the texture that big events leave out. It is also an easy question on a day when they are not in the mood to be serious.
What news event did everyone in your house talk about?
Why ask it
This gets a first-hand account rather than an opinion about history. Ask where they were and who they were with, since the personal setting is the part no record holds.
Is there a year you would live through again if you could?
Why ask it
Naming one year forces a choice, where a question about happy times invites a summary. The reason they give usually identifies the conditions they valued, such as having young children at home or work they were good at.
What was the hardest thing you had to get through, and who helped you?
Why ask it
Adding who helped keeps the question from being an invitation to relive it alone, and it brings in people who might otherwise never be mentioned. Let them stop where they want to stop; do not fill the pause with follow-up questions.
What did you do that your parents disapproved of?
Why ask it
This is often where the guarded version of the life gives way. It also produces the stories younger relatives most want to hear, since it shows the person before they became somebody's grandparent.
Looking at your working life as a whole, what are you glad you did, and what did you do only for the money?
Why ask it
The split gets an honest answer where a question about career satisfaction gets a polite one. Many people are relieved to say plainly that a long stretch of work meant nothing to them.
What did you believe strongly at thirty that you no longer believe?
Why ask it
This asks for a change of mind rather than a lesson, so the answer is specific rather than proverbial. It also tends to be the question that makes them think longest before answering.
Which of your things has a story attached to it?
Why ask it
Objects are reliable prompts, and the answer tells the family what to keep, which they will otherwise have to guess. Photograph the item alongside the recording so the two are not separated later.
What do you know how to do that hardly anyone learns now?
Why ask it
Skills such as mending, preserving, shorthand, or handling animals are worth capturing while there is someone to demonstrate them. Ask them to talk you through it step by step rather than to summarise it.
If this were being written down for your great-grandchildren, what would you want in it?
Why ask it
Keep it for last. It hands them editorial control after an hour of your questions, and what they add is often something no interviewer would have thought to ask about.
Recording a life story
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Setting up the sitting
Plan for forty minutes, not an afternoon
Concentration and voice both tire, and a long session usually ends with short answers. Three short sittings across a month produce far more than one marathon, and they let them remember things between visits.
Kill the background noise
A television, a fan, or a hard-floored room can make a recording unusable. Choose a soft room, put the phone or recorder on a cushion rather than a table, and check the first minute back before you carry on.
Sit where you can be heard
If they use a hearing aid, sit on that side, in the light, and do not talk while facing away. Repeating a question three times drains the goodwill you need for the harder ones later.
Say what the recording is for
People answer differently depending on who they think is listening. Tell them whether this is for you, for the grandchildren, or for a family archive, and ask if there is anything they want left out of it.
Getting past short answers
- Ask for one occasion rather than a general habit. Not what Christmas was like, but the Christmas they remember most.
- Use photographs, maps, and old street names as prompts. A picture unlocks names that direct questions do not.
- Ask what things cost and who else was there. Both produce detail and both help you date the story afterwards.
- When they say it was nothing special, ask what a normal week involved. The everyday is what nobody else recorded.
- Follow the person, not your list. If a name comes up twice, ask who that was before moving on.
Difficult ground
Do not correct dates or names
Arguing about whether it was 1953 or 1954 stops the story and puts them on the defensive. Note the uncertainty and check it later against records rather than against them.
Take a refusal at face value
War service, a lost child, a first marriage, or a period of poverty may be closed subjects. Say that you will leave it, and mean it. Sometimes it comes back on its own two visits later.
Expect the same story more than once
A repeated story is usually a story that matters. Listen for the small variations, and ask about a detail you did not hear the first time instead of saying you already know it.
Keeping what you gather
- Name each file with the date and the person, and copy it somewhere that is not only your phone.
- Write a short index of what is on each recording, with rough timings, so nobody has to listen to two hours to find one story.
- Transcribe at least the parts in their own words. Wording is the first thing lost when a story is retold.
- Note the names and places you could not spell, and check them with another relative rather than guessing.
- Ask before you share any of it with the wider family, including anything they told you in passing.