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Questions to ask your parents about their working life

Questions to ask your parents about their working life: first jobs, the workday, pay, unpaid and caregiving work, mentors, hard decisions and retirement.

By The Yourtale team · Published 28 September 2026 · 14 min read

The best questions to ask your parents about their working life are concrete ones: the first job and what the first pay went to, what a normal Tuesday at work looked like, who taught them the trade, the decision they agonized over, and the work nobody paid them for. Below is a question bank grouped by those themes, plus how to run the conversation.

Work is the part of a parent's life their children see least. You saw them leave in the morning and come home tired. You heard the name of a boss, a plant, a ward, a shop. What happened in between, for forty years, is usually a blank. It is also where a lot of their adult life actually went, and a lot of who they became.

This guide is for adult children who want to fill that blank for a family record or a memoir. It is not job-interview prep, and it is not a corporate history. It is a set of questions about one person's working life, including the parts that never appeared on a payslip.

Key takeaways

  • Ask about the work you never saw. Children know the job title and not the day. The day is where the stories are.
  • Concrete beats abstract. "Walk me through a normal shift" gets a better answer than "did you like your job?"
  • Count the unpaid work. Raising children, caring for a parent, running a farm kitchen or keeping a spouse's books is working life too, and it is the part most question lists leave out.
  • Ask about the pay and the money. It is the question families avoid and the one that explains the most.
  • Ten to twelve good questions fill a 90-minute sitting. Work is big enough for a sitting of its own.

Why ask your parents about their working life at all?

Because it is the largest stretch of their adult life that nobody in the family has on record. On a day they work, full-time employees in the US put in an average of 8.1 hours, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Over a forty-year career, our rough arithmetic puts that at more than 70,000 hours. Most families could not describe a single one of them in detail.

The oral-history world figured this out long ago. Since 2010 the Library of Congress has run an Occupational Folklife Project that has recorded more than 2,000 interviews with workers in more than a hundred trades, industries, crafts and professions. Studs Terkel built Working (1974) from more than a hundred interviews with ordinary people about their jobs, and it is still in print half a century later. The reason is the same in both cases: people talk about work with more candor and detail than almost anything else, if someone asks the right way.

Work also carries the history your parents lived through without calling it history. The factory that closed, the office that computerized, the year women were first allowed on the floor, the strike, the recession, the move to another city for a job. Ask about the work and the era comes with it.

What should you ask about their first jobs?

Start here. First jobs are vivid, low-stakes and usually funny, which makes them the right warm-up. They also sit in the stretch of life people remember best: memory researchers call it the reminiscence bump, the tendency to recall the years from roughly ten to thirty more readily than any other.

  1. What was the very first thing anyone paid you to do? How old were you, and how much did you get?
  2. What did the first real paycheck go to? Do you remember holding it?
  3. How did you find that job? Who told you about it, and who vouched for you?
  4. What did your parents think you would end up doing for a living? What did you think?
  5. What did you have to wear, carry or learn on the first day?
  6. Was there a job you took only because you had to? What did it teach you anyway?

The follow-up that works every time: "Who else worked there?" A first job is a cast of characters, and the characters are what make the chapter.

What was a typical workday actually like?

This is the section children know least about, and the one that makes a written life feel real. Ask them to walk you through it, hour by hour, as if you were starting there tomorrow.

  1. Walk me through a normal day. What time did you get up, and how did you get to work?
  2. What did the place look like, sound like and smell like? Draw me the floor plan if you can.
  3. What did you actually do with your hands, or at your desk, for most of the day?
  4. Who did you eat lunch with, and where?
  5. What words or jargon did everybody there use that nobody outside would understand?
  6. What was the worst part of the job that nobody on the outside knew about?
  7. What were you better at than anyone else there?

The floor plan is not a gimmick. Asking someone to sketch the room while they talk puts them back inside it, and the stories follow the pencil: this was the foreman's desk, this is where the machine jammed, this is the door we used to smoke by.

If a parent ran their own business, the working life is a book of its own. How to write a family business history book has the founder's questions, from the first customer to the handover.

What did they earn, and what did money mean to them?

Families avoid this. It is also the question that explains the most: why you moved, why there was or was not money for university, why one parent stayed home. Ask it plainly and without judgment.

  1. What did you earn in your first full-time job? Did it feel like a lot?
  2. Was there a year when money was really tight? What did the family cut?
  3. Who handled the money at home, and how was that decided?
  4. What was the biggest raise or promotion you ever got, and what did you do the day it came through?
  5. Did you ever take a job for the money that you would not have taken otherwise?
  6. What did you learn about money the hard way?

Write down the numbers they give you. A weekly wage in the currency of 1968 is a small, exact detail that makes a chapter feel true, and it is gone the moment they are.

What about the work nobody paid them for?

This is the section most question lists leave out, and the one that matters most for a lot of mothers, and for a growing number of fathers. Working life is not only paid employment. It includes raising children, running a household, caring for a sick parent, doing a spouse's books for the family firm, working the family farm, or volunteering for decades at a church, a union or a school.

The numbers are not small. In the Bureau of Labor Statistics' 2025 time-use survey, 87 percent of women and 75 percent of men did some household work on an average day, and in homes with children under six, women spent 2.8 hours a day on childcare against 1.7 for men. Separately, 38.2 million Americans provided unpaid eldercare in 2023 and 2024, and almost half of them were caring for a parent. The generation you are interviewing did more of this, not less, and almost none of it made it onto a résumé.

If a parent spent years at home, do not skip to "and then you went back to work." Those years were work, and they have their own stories.

  1. When you were home with us, what did a normal day look like, from the moment you woke up?
  2. What work did you do that never had a title or a wage?
  3. Did you ever look after your own parents or someone else who was ill? What did that involve, day to day?
  4. What did people outside the family not understand about the work you did at home?
  5. Was there a paid job you gave up, or never took, because of the family? How do you see that decision now?
  6. What unpaid work are you proudest of?

Ask the fifth question gently. For some parents it is settled and they will say so. For others it is the most important thing they have never been asked.

What was it like to be a woman at work then?

If you are interviewing your mother, this section is often the richest in the whole conversation. Many women now in their seventies and eighties entered a workplace with rules that sound unbelievable today, and most of them have never been asked to describe it. In 1950, about one in three American women (33.9 percent) was in the labor force. By 1970 it was 43 percent, and it peaked at 60 percent in 1999, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. A woman now in her late seventies may have lived that whole curve, and been part of the reason for it.

  1. What jobs were open to women when you started working, and which were closed?
  2. Did you have to stop working when you married or had a child? Was that a rule, an expectation, or your choice?
  3. Were you ever paid less than a man doing the same job? How did you know?
  4. Who was the first woman you saw in a job you wanted?
  5. What did you have to put up with that you would not accept for your daughter or granddaughter?
  6. What changed for women at work over your career, and what did not?

Ask fathers a version of these too. "What did you think when the first woman joined your crew?" and "Who looked after us while you were at work?" often open a longer, more honest answer than a direct question about marriage.

Who taught them, and which decisions did they struggle with?

Every working life has a handful of people who changed its direction and a handful of decisions that still get replayed at night. These are the stories that turn a career summary into a life story.

  1. Who taught you the job? What did they actually say or do that stuck?
  2. Who was the best boss you ever had, and the worst? What made the difference?
  3. Was there a moment you nearly quit? What kept you there, or what finally made you go?
  4. Did you ever have to let someone go, or were you let go yourself? What happened that day?
  5. Was there a job, a move or a promotion you turned down? Do you still think about it?
  6. Were you ever asked to do something at work you believed was wrong? What did you do?
  7. Were you part of a union, a strike or a fight with management? What was it about?

Let them tell the version they remember. If it contradicts something you thought you knew, do not correct them on the recording. And if a question lands somewhere they do not want to go, let it go. Come back another day, or not at all.

For a longer bank, the Southern Oral History Program at UNC publishes 16 pages of life-history questions with a full section for workers, covering hiring, supervision, unions, danger on the job and how people felt about their work. It was written for interviews with industrial workers, so adapt it for an office or a hospital.

How did the work end? Questions about retirement

Endings are underrated. How a working life stops, whether by choice, by illness, by a closure or by a slow fade, says a great deal about how a person saw it. If the retirement is happening now, these are also the questions behind a memoir as a retirement gift for a parent.

  1. How did you know it was time to stop? Was it your decision?
  2. What was your last day like? Did anyone mark it?
  3. What did you miss in the first year, and what were you glad to be rid of?
  4. Who were you, once you were no longer the job?
  5. Is there any work you still do, paid or unpaid, that you would never retire from?
  6. Looking back, what was all that work for?

Close every sitting with the last one. It is often the most quotable answer in the conversation, and it ends the recording on the whole life rather than on the last job.

How do you run the conversation?

A list of questions is the easy part. These habits are what make the answers usable.

Give work its own sitting. A general life-story interview spends ten minutes on "and then I worked at the plant for thirty years." Work deserves a sitting of its own. Sixty to ninety minutes is the length the Baylor Institute for Oral History recommends before concentration fades. In our experience that fits ten to twelve questions from the bank above, if you let them branch.

Ask how, not whether. The Smithsonian folklife interview guide uses a work example: "How did you learn your trade?" is a good question, "Did you like learning your trade?" is a bad one. Questions that start with how, what or why get stories. Questions that start with did or do get a yes.

Bring objects. A payslip, a union card, a uniform, a staff photo, a retirement card, a tool from the garage. The same Smithsonian guide lists tools and mementos among the things that stir memory, and in our experience an object in the hands does more than any question. Ask, "Tell me about this."

Ask them to explain the jargon. When they say "the line", "the ward", "the ledger" or "second shift", ask what it meant. You are recording for a reader who has never been inside that building, including a great-grandchild who will not know what a switchboard was.

Get past the résumé. Parents often answer career questions with a list of employers and dates. That is a résumé, not a story. Pick one line from it and ask, "Take me back to the first week there."

Do not fill the silence. A pause after "was there a job you turned down?" is usually the moment before the real answer. Wait.

Record it. Your phone's voice memo app is enough. Record a minute and play it back before you start, then back it up the same day, then get a rough transcript so the words can become a chapter. The voice itself is worth keeping, and we wrote about how to keep a parent's actual voice in the book. If a parent lives far away, the same interview works over the phone, and recording a far-away parent's life story covers the setup.

Working life is one theme. For the rest of the life, we have companion guides on questions to ask your mom about her life and questions to ask your dad about his life, and a tighter 90-minute interview set if you only get one sitting.

How our service does this

We run these interviews for families who would rather not run them alone. An AI interviewer talks with your parent in 60 to 90-minute sittings, follows the themes above, asks for the jargon and the floor plan, and waits through the silences. It then drafts chapters from the transcripts, which your family reviews and edits before anything is printed into a hardcover memoir. Nobody on our team reads the story unless you ask us to help.

We are honest that the interviewer is AI, not a person. That is why it is patient and available whenever your parent is. It is an interviewer with a finite job, producing a book about one person's life. It is not a companion, and it is not a corporate-history service.

We are not the right fit for everyone. If your parent would rather be interviewed by you, or by a former colleague, that conversation will be better than ours. The questions on this page work either way. What matters is that someone asks, and that the answers are recorded while they can still be.

Frequently asked questions

What questions should I ask my parents about their working life? Start concrete. Ask what their first paid job was and what the first pay went to, what a normal day at work looked like hour by hour, who taught them the job, what they earned and what money meant at home, the decision they struggled with most, and how the work ended. Include unpaid work such as raising children or caring for a relative, which most lists skip. Close with "Looking back, what was all that work for?"

How do I get my parent to talk about work beyond job titles and dates? Pick one job from the list and ask them to walk you through a normal day there, from waking up to coming home. Ask them to sketch the floor plan, name the people they ate lunch with, and explain the jargon. Bring an object such as a payslip, uniform or staff photo. Specific, physical questions pull a person back into the place, and the stories follow.

Should I include unpaid work and caregiving? Yes. Raising children, running a household, caring for an ill parent and working in a family business without a wage are all working life, and for many parents they took up more years than any paid job. Ask what a normal day at home looked like and whether there was a paid job they gave up or never took because of the family. Ask that one gently.

Is it rude to ask my parents how much they earned? Not if you ask plainly and without judgment, and explain why you want to know. Pay explains a great deal about a family's choices: where you lived, who stayed home, whether there was money for university. Most parents are more willing to talk about it than their children expect. Write down the actual figures they give you.

How many work questions can I ask in one sitting? About ten to twelve in a 90-minute conversation, if you let each answer run and follow the side stories. Working life is big enough to deserve a sitting of its own rather than a few minutes inside a general life-story interview. Pick two or three questions from each theme and save the rest for a second conversation.

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