25 questions to ask your mum about her life before you

The best questions to ask your mum are about the years you weren't there for: her first job, the first place she lived away from home, the friends she had at twenty, the plans that changed and the risks she took anyway. Most of us know our mothers almost entirely in the role of Mum. The person before the role – who she was at nineteen, what she wanted, what frightened her – is usually the part nobody has asked about. Below are 25 questions grouped by stage of life, chosen because they invite stories rather than summaries, plus practical advice on how to ask them so the conversation feels like talking, not an interview.

Why ask your mum about her life before you

There is a strange blind spot in most families. We know our mothers in extraordinary detail as mothers – how they take their tea, what they say when they're cross, the phrase they always use on the phone – and almost nothing about the first twenty-five years of their lives. Those years happened before we were watching, and by the time we are old enough to be curious, the habit of not asking is well set.

It is also worth knowing that those early years may be the ones she remembers best. Researchers studying autobiographical memory have found that older adults recall a disproportionate number of memories from adolescence and early adulthood – a pattern psychologists call the reminiscence bump. One study in Memory & Cognition placed the peak between roughly 11 and 25, and linked it to identity: these are the years in which people work out who they are, so the memories stay close. In practice, that means questions about her twenties often land more easily than questions about last year.

There is a family reason too. If you have children, they know her only as Grandma. The version of her who hitch-hiked to Cornwall, or turned down a job, or nearly married someone else, is a story they will one day want – and the person in the middle, between her generation and theirs, is you.

25 questions to ask your mum

These are grouped by stage of life. You don't need all of them – three or four good ones will fill an afternoon.

Growing up

1. What did your bedroom look like when you were ten?
2. Who was the adult outside the family you most looked up to?
3. What were you told off for most as a child?
4. What did you want to be, and who did you tell?
5. What did your family do on a Sunday?

Leaving home

6. Where was the first place you lived that wasn't your parents' house?
7. Who did you live with, and what was the rent?
8. What was the first thing you bought with your own money?
9. What did you cook when it was just you?
10. What did your mother say when you left?

Work and money

11. Tell me about your first day at your first job.
12. What was the worst job you ever had?
13. Was there a job or course you wanted and didn't get – or didn't go for?
14. What did you spend your first payday on?

Friends, love and going out

15. Who was your best friend at twenty, and what happened to them?
16. Where did you go on a Saturday night?
17. What music were you listening to, and where did you hear it?
18. Who did you go out with before you settled down?
19. What did you wear to feel your best?

Risks, changes of plan and courage

20. What's the bravest thing you did before you had children?
21. Was there a plan that went completely wrong? What happened next?
22. Was there a moment you nearly took a different road?
23. What were you frightened of then that you aren't now?

Becoming my mum

24. What did you think motherhood would be like – and what surprised you?
25. What did you have to give up, and do you ever miss it?

The last two are deliberately left until the end. They are the most personal, and they tend to come more easily once she has spent an hour remembering herself as someone other than a parent.

How to ask without it feeling like an interview

Start with a photograph. A picture of her at twenty, left on the table, does more work than any question on this list. "Where was this taken?" gives her somewhere specific to stand. If the photos are in a box in the loft, getting them down together is itself a good start. The recent fashion online for posting photos of parents when they were young shows how much people enjoy seeing them – the step most people skip is asking what was happening when the picture was taken.

Ask about a moment, not a topic. "What was work like in the seventies?" produces a summary. "Tell me about your first day" produces a story. The grammatical change is small; the difference in what you hear back is large.

Go side by side, not face to face. Some of the best conversations happen on a walk, in the car, or while doing something together with your hands. Sitting opposite each other with a phone between you is the setting most likely to make her go quiet. Half-term, a long drive to see relatives, or an afternoon sorting old things are all natural openings.

Let the grandchildren ask. A teenager asking "Grandma, what did you do at weekends when you were my age?" often gets a fuller answer than you would. The question comes from curiosity rather than duty, and she may enjoy surprising them.

Keep the first one short. Stop while she still has more to say. It makes the second conversation far more likely, and the second is usually better than the first. Our guide on how to get an elderly parent to talk about their past goes further into what to do if she deflects.

Common questions

What if she says there's nothing to tell?

Many mothers say this, usually meaning "nothing dramatic". Don't argue with it. Ask something small and concrete instead – "What did you have for tea when you shared that flat?" – and let one detail lead to the next. The ordinary detail is precisely what her grandchildren will value later.

Should I record the conversation?

Yes, if she agrees. Ask first, tell her what the recording is for and who will hear it, and respect a no. Once she has agreed, place the recorder out of her eyeline and start it before the conversation properly begins – most people forget about it within minutes. Her voice, her phrasing and the way she laughs at her own stories are worth keeping alongside the words.

What's the difference between these and general family history questions?

Family history questions often chase dates, places and names for a family tree. These questions are about character: who she was, what she wanted and what she chose. If you want the broader set, our 20 best family history interview questions cover origins and ancestry, and 10 questions to ask your grandparents works well when there is a generation further back to ask.

Turning the answers into something that lasts

Recordings on a phone have a way of staying on the phone. If you would like her answers to become something the family can read and hand on, Chronicle was built for exactly this: a guided series of conversations, in her own words and at her own pace, shaped into a physical book. You can see how it works here.

But the most important step needs no service at all. Pick one question from this list, find a photograph from before you were born, and ask her about it this week.