Questions to Ask Your Father
Questions for a long conversation with your father: what his own house and early working life were like, how he made the decisions that shaped yours, what he noticed about you growing up, and what he has never been asked. Written for a visit, a drive, or a recording you want to keep.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What was the house like when you were a kid: who was in it, and how loud was it?
Why ask it
A concrete opener works better than asking about his childhood in general, which usually gets a one word verdict like fine. Once the rooms and the people in them are described, stories follow, and you often learn how much space and quiet he had, which explains how he keeps a house now.
What did your father do for work, and what did you actually understand about it at the time?
Why ask it
Children rarely know what their parents do, and the gap between what he saw and what was going on is usually where the family's money situation appears. Expect hours, absences, or a job he only understood the difficulty of years later.
What were you like at the age I am now?
Why ask it
Asked plainly, this often produces the least filtered answer of the whole conversation, because he has to describe someone who no longer exists and has nothing to defend. It also gives you a fair basis for comparison the next time he has advice about your life.
What is a smell or a sound that puts you straight back somewhere?
Why ask it
Sensory memory goes around the practiced anecdotes. A workshop, a particular soap, an engine, a hymn: whatever he names usually arrives with a story attached that has never come up at a dinner table, because nothing ever prompted it.
What were you good at that you never really got to use?
Why ask it
Most people carry an abandoned ability: a sport, an instrument, a trade they half trained for. It rarely comes up because there is no occasion to mention it, and it is often the answer children find most surprising about a parent they thought they knew.
How did the two of you decide the big things: where to live, when to have children?
Why ask it
Family history gets retold as though it were planned. Often the truth is a job that came up, a house that was cheap, a pregnancy that arrived first. Hearing how much was chance rather than design tends to change how you judge your own indecision.
Which year was the hardest, and did we know at the time?
Why ask it
The second half is what makes this worth asking. Parents work hard to keep bad years invisible, and finding out which one it was, a layoff, a diagnosis, a debt, reorganizes a stretch of childhood you remember as ordinary.
What scared you about becoming a father?
Why ask it
Asking about the fear rather than the joy gets you something specific: money, his own father, whether he would be any good at it. Men of some generations were never asked this when it was happening, and many have an answer that has been waiting decades.
What was the best job you ever had, and the worst?
Why ask it
The pairing gets both ends of a working life in one answer, and the reasons are rarely about pay. It also surfaces the jobs that never made it into the family story, the ones that came before the career he is known for.
How did you handle it when you were out of your depth at work?
Why ask it
Children mostly hear the summary version of a parent's career. Whatever he describes, bluffing, asking for help, working late without telling anyone, is probably a habit he handed to you without either of you noticing it happen.
What did you notice about me as a kid that you never mentioned?
Why ask it
Parents watch far more closely than children realize, and this asks for the observation rather than the verdict. Answers tend to be small and precise, about how you handled losing or who you were trying to impress, and they land harder than a compliment.
When did you stop thinking of me as a child?
Why ask it
There is usually a moment, and it is rarely a milestone: a decision you made, a problem you handled without calling him. Hearing it tells you how he currently sees you, which is more reliable than asking him that directly.
What have you changed your mind about?
Why ask it
Recent changes are worth more than old ones, so ask what caused it. Politics, religion, how to treat someone, what money is for: a father who can describe changing his mind is a father you can disagree with productively, and that is useful to establish.
What do you wish you had asked your own parents?
Why ask it
An easier route into this territory than asking what he wants you to know, and the answer doubles as a list of what to ask him. People often realize mid-sentence that they are describing a conversation you are both still able to have.
What do you think you got wrong with me?
Why ask it
This one can go two ways, so ask it once and without a list of your own grievances attached. An honest answer is worth a great deal. A deflection is better accepted quietly than pressed, because pushing turns the conversation into the argument you were trying to avoid.
What do you worry about now?
Why ask it
Present tense matters; asked about the past, worry gets tidied into a lesson. Answers about money, his health, or a sibling of yours tell you what he is carrying, and often what he has decided not to mention to anyone in the family.
Is there something you want to see or do that you keep putting off?
Why ask it
More actionable than asking about dreams. Sometimes it is a place, sometimes a person he has not spoken to in twenty years, and it is often something you could help arrange this year rather than regret later.
How do you want things handled as you get older?
Why ask it
Ask calmly, once, and write down what he says: where he would want to live, who he would want deciding for him, where the documents are. Families who have this conversation early are not more morbid, they are just spared having it in a hospital corridor.
What do you think I have got right that you did not?
Why ask it
It gives him a way to be generous without having to make a speech, and the answer often contains a regret he has never said out loud. Fathers who find praise difficult tend to manage this version more easily than a direct compliment.
What have I never asked you that you would have answered?
Why ask it
A good place to stop, because it hands him the floor. What comes out is usually the thing he has been waiting to be given permission to say, and it is often not a story at all but a plain sentence about how he feels about you.
Having the conversation
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Setting it up
Pick a side-by-side setting
A drive, a walk, a workbench, washing up. Men who find a face-to-face conversation about feelings difficult will often talk at length while both of you are looking at something else. Sitting across a table with a list is the version most likely to stall.
Ask for facts before feelings
Start with what happened, who was there, what the house looked like. The feeling arrives on its own once the scene is described. Opening with how did that make you feel tends to produce a shrug, and then you have used up your best material.
Ask if you can record it, and say why
Many people agree once they understand it is for you and not for anyone else. Put the phone down out of eye line and forget it. If he says no, write notes the same evening while the phrasing is still his rather than yours.
Take three questions, not twenty
One good question that gets ten minutes beats twelve that get a sentence each. Choose the three you would regret not asking, ask them slowly, and leave the rest for the next visit. This works better as a series than as an interview.
When an answer stalls
- Follow with what happened next rather than a new question. Most short answers are the opening of a story he assumes you are not interested in.
- Use a photograph. Handing him one and asking who else was there is often more effective than any question on a list.
- Say what you thought was true and let him correct you. People who will not volunteer a story will happily fix your version of it.
- Answer your own question first when you get a one-liner. Going first lowers the cost of going second.
- Let a silence run. The pause before the good part of an answer is longer than feels comfortable, and filling it usually ends the answer.
- Accept a refusal without negotiating. Coming back to it in six months works far more often than pressing tonight.
Common pitfalls
Turning it into the conversation you have been rehearsing
If there is a grievance you want to raise, raise it separately and deliberately. Smuggling it into a set of questions about his life will end both conversations at once, and he will be wary the next time you ask him anything.
Correcting his memory
Dates, sequences and who said what will sometimes be wrong. Unless it matters, let it stand and ask another question. Being fact-checked is the fastest way to make someone stop telling you things.
Saving the important questions for later
Health changes, and so does willingness. If there is one thing you actually want to know, ask it in the first hour rather than holding it back for a better occasion that may not come.
Expecting a different father than the one you have
Some men will not do this, and a list of questions will not change that. If you get short answers, the conversation was still worth having, and there is usually more available in a second attempt on a different day.