Questions to ask a birth parent you have just met

20 questions to ask a birth parent you have just met about the 1950s

Not history: their 1950s. The house, the wage, the first television on the street, what the grown-ups said at the table, what they expected life to become. Ask for the numbers and the clothes. Ask about their parents before you ask about yourself. It gives you both somewhere to stand, and it is the family history you came for.

How to use this list. Ask by voice and record it. One or two questions a visit is plenty; the follow-up ("Who else was there?" "What did she say?" "What happened the day after?") matters more than the next question. The 1 marked tender come last: ask them once, late, in person, with "or would you rather leave that?" in the question.

1. How was the house heated, and who got up first to see to it?Cold puts a reader in another era faster than any date.
2. What was the punishment at your school, and did you ever get it?
3. What did your first wage packet hold, and how much of it did you hand over at home?The split between the wage and the housekeeping is the whole family economy in one number.
4. Where did you go dancing, and what night of the week was it?The dance hall is where most of the love chapters begin.
5. Was there a pub, a hall or a club where everyone went? What did it look like inside?One room described well stands in for a whole youth.
6. What was the first car the family had, and where did it take you?The first car redraws the family's whole map.
7. Did you grow up around working animals: horses, cows, hens, pigeons? Who looked after them?Working animals mean a working childhood, and that is a different book.
8. How old were you in 1955, and what did an ordinary Tuesday look like that year?Pin the decade to a day in their life, not to history.
9. When did a television first come into your house? Or whose house did you go to, to watch one?The arrival of the set is a scene the whole street was in.
10. What did you wear in the 1950s that you would not be seen in now? Who ironed it?
11. What did a loaf of bread, a bus fare or a week's rent cost then? Which number do you still remember?One remembered price does the work of a paragraph of history.
12. Where were you when rock and roll arrived? Who played it to you first?Who played it first is a character; the record is only a date.
13. What did the grown-ups talk about in the 1950s when they thought you were not listening?The overheard adult world is how a child learns what the decade was afraid of.
14. What was still rationed, broken or unrebuilt in your town when you were growing up?
15. Who on your street had a telephone, a fridge or a car first? What did everyone say about them?First on the street is a small drama of envy and pride.
16. What was the big news story you remember from the 1950s, and what did your father say about it at the table?
17. What did you do on a Saturday afternoon in the 1950s: the pictures, the match, the shops?
18. What did you expect your life to look like in 1959? How much of it came true?The expected life and the lived one, side by side, is the memoir's engine.
19. Who was the glamorous one in your family or your street in the 1950s? What did they wear, and where did they go?
20. Was there polio, TB or another illness that everyone was afraid of? Did it touch your street?tender

What these questions are for

A good book about a person needs more than facts. It needs the person on the page: how they talked, what they wanted, what they did when it mattered, the story that shows them. These questions cover 11 of the things a writer needs about a birth parent you have just met: habits, routines and work, their place in history, the story that shows them, loves and tastes, objects, places, food, music, how they look and move, how others saw them, key relationships, wants, fears and wounds, contradictions, loss and fate.

More questions to ask a birth parent you have just met

• All questions to ask a birth parent you have just met
• Questions to ask a birth parent you have just met about their childhood
• Questions to ask a birth parent you have just met about family history
• Questions to ask a birth parent you have just met about their work
• Questions to ask a birth parent you have just met about faith and beliefs
• Questions to ask a birth parent you have just met about food and the kitchen table
• Questions to ask a birth parent you have just met for their advice
• Questions to ask a birth parent you have just met that go deep
• Questions to ask a birth parent you have just met about the houses they lived in

Or see questions for everyone else, and how to interview a parent about their life.