How to interview a parent about their life

Most people mean to do this. They think, one of these days I’ll sit down with Dad and get the stories on tape. Then one of these days stops arriving. If you do it now, while it’s easy, you’ll be glad in a way that’s hard to describe until you’re holding the recording.

Here’s how to do it, without making it weird.

You need less than you think

A phone. That’s it. Open the voice memo app, hit record, set the phone face-up on the table between you. Don’t buy a microphone. Don’t set up a camera on a tripod, because the tripod turns a conversation into a performance and your parent will start talking like they’re on the news.

A kitchen table beats a formal sit-down. So does a car on a long drive, where nobody has to make eye contact and the stories come easier. Pick the least official place you can.

If it helps to know you’re in good company: this is the same form the Library of Congress collects. StoryCorps has recorded more than 645,000 people, most of them ordinary families at a table, and the recordings are archived at the American Folklife Center. A kitchen-table interview is not a lesser version of something. It is the thing itself.

Plan one sitting, not a project

Forty minutes.

40 minutes the session length StoryCorps has used for more than 645,000 interviews StoryCorps, archived at the Library of Congress American Folklife Center

That number has been tested more than any other in the history of family interviews, and it holds up for a reason. Shorter, and you only get the rehearsed stories. Much longer, and both of you tire in a way you can hear on the tape. One good sitting beats a grand plan for a series that never gets its second session. If the first one goes well, you can always ask again next month.

Ask about the years memory keeps best

Memory researchers have a name for something you can use: the reminiscence bump. Adults past forty recall far more from roughly ages ten to thirty than from any later stretch of life. It has been reproduced so many times it is one of the most reliable findings in memory research, and it is why a question about a first job comes back in scenes while a question about the 1990s comes back in a shrug.

So aim early. Firsts, school, the house they grew up in, how they met the people they loved, what the world looked like when they were twenty. The list below leans that way on purpose.

Getting a reluctant parent talking

A lot of parents wave this off. “Nobody wants to hear about me.” Don’t argue with that. Start smaller than their whole life.

Ask about an object. A photo on the wall, a tool in the garage, the ring they wear. Objects have stories attached and the story comes out sideways, without the pressure of “tell me about your childhood.” Once they’re talking, they keep going. Your only job then is to stay quiet and let the silence do the work. Count to five before you fill a pause. They’ll fill it first, and what they add is usually the good part.

Twenty questions that work

Pick a handful. You won’t get through all of them, and you shouldn’t try.

1. Where did you grow up, and what did the house feel like?
2. Who were you closest to as a kid?
3. What did your parents do, and what did you learn from watching them work?
4. What were you like in school? Were you good at it?
5. What’s a time you got in real trouble?
6. What was the first job you were proud of?
7. How did you meet the people you loved?
8. What was going on in the world that you remember?
9. When did you feel most on your own for the first time?
10. What did you believe at 25 that you don’t believe now?
11. What’s the hardest thing you lived through?
12. What are you proudest of that nobody knows about?
13. What did you always say you’d do, and did you?
14. Who shaped you the most?
15. What’s a smell or a song that puts you somewhere instantly?
16. What did you worry about as a young parent?
17. What do you know now that you wish you’d known then?
18. What do you want us to remember about your parents and grandparents?
19. Is there anything you’ve never told us?
20. What do you hope we hold onto?

That last handful gets quiet. Let it. The quiet ones are why you’re doing this.

If you want more to choose from, the questions an obituary never asks is the companion to this guide: fewer instructions, more questions, and the reason each one earns its place.

What to do with what you get

Do one thing right away so the recording doesn’t vanish into your phone. Rename the file with a name and a date. “Mom, July 2026” beats “Voice 047” when you’re looking for it in five years.

Then, when you have time, jot a rough index. Note the minute where the good stories land, so you’re not scrubbing through an hour to find the one about the truck. If you want a transcript, your phone can probably make one now, and reading it turns up things you missed while you were busy thinking of the next question.

That’s enough. You don’t have to make it into anything bigger to have done something that matters. The recording is the gift. If you later want to shape it into a life story that the whole family can visit and add to, that’s what we do at Perdura. But the first and most important step is the one you can take this weekend. Set the phone on the table and ask.