Asking a parent you aren't close to
Start outside the relationship. "What was your father like when you were nine?" is answerable by a parent you barely speak to. Anything that begins "why did you" is not, and will end the conversation in the first ten minutes. The MemoriesBox interview opens the same way.
Not doing this is a legitimate choice
Most pages about family recording assume you want to be closer to the person. Sometimes you do not, and sometimes the distance was expensive and is load-bearing.
If the relationship involved violence, or if contact costs you something you cannot afford right now, then not recording is a complete and reasonable answer. Nobody is owed a life story, least of all by the person they hurt. There is no deadline that makes it obligatory, and the fact that they are ageing does not transfer the debt to you. You can decide not to, and you can decide not to explain that decision to your family either.
The rest of this page is for people who have decided to try anyway, usually for one of three reasons: there are facts only this person holds, there are children who will ask, or there is a wish not to be standing in a hallway in ten years wondering. All three are good enough. None of them requires you to feel warmly about it.
What this is, and what it is not
This is an interview. It is not a reconciliation, a mediation, or a chance to be told the truth about your own childhood.
That sounds cold and it is the thing that makes it possible. An interview has a role for each of you — one person asks, one person answers — and roles are much easier to hold than a relationship is. It also has an ending, a length, and a subject, all of which you get to set in advance.
Be clear with yourself about the likely outcome. 53% of British adults say they learned something new about a family member after that person died, and 43% found it while clearing out their home (Ancestry.co.uk, November 2022, n=2,000). You will probably get information. You will probably not get an apology, and if you go in for one you will end up with neither.
This page is not therapy and we are not clinicians. If what you are considering is an interview about a period that still frightens you, do not do it alone and do not do it first.
Set the terms out loud, before you record
Say all of this in one go, at the start. It is much easier than negotiating it later.
- How long. Forty minutes, once. Not an open commitment to a series.
- What is off the table. Name the subjects you are not asking about, so they know the conversation is bounded.
- Who hears it. Say plainly whether this is for you, for your children, or for the family.
- They can stop. So can you. Either of you can end the session without a reason.
- What happens to it. Say where it will be kept, and that they can ask for a copy.
A third-party frame helps more than anything else here. "I'm doing this for the kids" or "I'm doing this for the record" gives you both something to hide behind. It is true, and it removes the implication that you are here to repair something.
Start here
Deliberately impersonal. Nothing in this table is about you, and nothing is about the relationship.
| Ask | Then ask |
|---|---|
| Where were you living when you were nine? | How many rooms, and who slept where? |
| What did your father do for work? | What time did he leave the house, and what time did he come back? |
| What was the first job you were paid for? | What did the first wages go on? |
| Who taught you to drive? | What was the car, and what was wrong with it? |
| What was in your mother's kitchen that you never see now? | Who used it, and what happened to it? |
The middle of the conversation
Their childhood, not yours
This is the most productive ground on this page. A difficult parent is often much more honest about being a child than about being a parent, and what comes out of this section frequently explains — without excusing — a great deal.
| Ask | Then ask |
|---|---|
| What was your father like when you were nine? | What happened when he was angry? |
| Who in that house was in charge of the money? | What happened when there wasn't enough? |
| What were you frightened of at that age? | Did anybody know? |
| Who looked after you when your parents were working? | What did you call them? |
The years you weren't there
The parts of their life that do not involve you are the easiest to ask about and often the most useful to have.
| Ask | Then ask |
|---|---|
| What was the job you stayed in longest? | Who did you work with that you still think about? |
| Where were you living the year before I was born? | What was that place like at the time? |
| Who were you close to in your twenties? | What happened to them? |
| Was there a point when you thought your life was going somewhere else? | What stopped it? |
The facts you actually need
If you get nothing else, get these. They are practical, they are neutral, and they are the ones that are genuinely lost when someone dies.
| Ask | Then ask |
|---|---|
| Who is in this photograph, and where was it taken? | Which year, roughly, and who took it? |
| What illnesses run in your side of the family? | Who had them, and at what age? |
| Where did our name come from, and was it ever spelled differently? | Who changed it, and why? |
| Where are the documents kept? | Who else knows that? |
Questions to save for later
You may never ask these. That is a normal outcome of this page rather than a failure of it.
If you do ask, expect a version rather than the truth: people defend themselves, and a recording makes them defend themselves harder. Ask once, take whatever answer arrives, and do not argue with it on tape. You are not going to win the argument, and the recording will become a record of the argument instead of a record of them.
| Ask | Then ask |
|---|---|
| Was there a time when things changed between us? | What do you think was going on for you then? |
| What did you find hardest about being a parent at that age? | Who did you talk to about it? |
| Is there anything you would do differently? | Did you ever tell anyone that? |
| What do you want the grandchildren to know about you? | Is there anything you would rather they didn't? |
Do not ask for an apology. An interview cannot produce one, and the attempt turns forty minutes of usable material into a scene that neither of you will want to hear again.
The question that usually works when nothing else does
What was your father like when you were nine?
It moves the whole conversation out of the space between you and into a house neither of you is standing in. A parent who cannot talk to you about being a parent will often talk very plainly about being a child, because in that story they are not the one being judged. It reliably produces detail — hours, rooms, tempers, money — and it frequently produces the sentence that makes the rest of your childhood legible. It is not forgiveness and it does not ask you to forgive. It is just information you did not have, in their voice.
If it goes badly
End the session early and do not delete anything that night. A recording made in a bad hour is still a record, and the decision to erase it is better made in six months than in six minutes.
If they refuse outright, take it as an answer. There is a separate page on the version where the refusal is the whole problem: how to record someone who doesn't want to be recorded.
If you find you cannot do it, that is where this page started. It is a legitimate choice and it stays legitimate afterwards.
Questions people ask
Should I record a parent I'm estranged from?
Only if you want the material for yourself or your children. Do not do it to repair the relationship, because an interview is a poor instrument for that, and do not do it out of obligation. If contact itself is unsafe, the answer is no, and it does not need justifying.
What do I ask a parent I barely speak to?
Ask about their childhood and their work. "What was your father like when you were nine" and "what was the first job you were paid for" are answerable without intimacy, and they carry most of what is actually lost when someone dies.
Will recording them fix anything between us?
Probably not, and it is better to assume not. Some people find the role of interviewer easier than the role of child, and a few conversations get warmer as a result. That is a side effect. Treat it as a record first.
What if they lie, or tell a version I know is wrong?
Let it stand on the recording and do not correct them on tape. You are collecting their account, not a verified history, and the way a person tells a story they have rearranged is itself information. Note the discrepancy elsewhere if it matters.
Related: When they say there is nothing to tell · Questions to ask before it's too late · All the question pages · Who agreed to be recorded
If you do record, MemoriesBox keeps the audio in the person's own voice, in the European Union, and lets you export everything at any time. $139 a year, first 14 days free, cancel anytime.