171 Raising A Family Questions to Ask People (Storytelling)

Ask people these 171 raising a family questions for storytelling.

I have interviewed hundreds of people about their experiences of raising a family. Based on the answers I received in those interviews, I have put together a list of writing prompts and questions about raising families to ask people when writing narratives. Use these prompts and questions to help you

• Identify events and memories you can write about
• Organize and write your narrative and story
• Develop questions to ask other people about their life’s
• Organize, research and write stories about others
• Know what type of information to include in narratives and stories
• Identify memorabilia, artifacts, photos, documents to include in stories
• Develop ideas for journaling, story starters, poetry, memoirs, and more

Writing Prompts and Questions

About Raising a Family to Ask People

The “Raising A Family” writing prompts and questions to ask people are part of the 28 articles, 108 category series entitled “7,500-plus Questions About Life to Ask People When Writing Narratives.” The prompts and questions are provided to help you look at raising a family from as many angles as possible when writing narratives about yourself, your family, and others.

Find 171 questions and prompts. Use these prompts and questions to gather and organize information to help you write about an individual, your family, and others. These questions cover many aspects of family life: events, values, traditions, religion, relationships, culture, finances, disappointments, struggles, happy moments, and more, including thoughts, feelings, and experiences.

Approach each topic from the point of view of the person/lives you are writing about. You don’t have to ask every question. Review the questions and determine which ones are most appropriate to ask. I would encourage you to modify and add questions as you desire.

I have prepared a couple of other resources that will provide value in interviewing for and writing individual, personal, and family narratives: “Complete Guide for Conducting Oral History Interviews” and “Complete Guide to Writing A Personal Narrative.”

1. Did you raise a family?
   • How old were you when you started raising your family?
   • Were you married, single, or other?
   • Where you birth parent, foster parent, adoptive parent, grandparent or other?
   • Did you raise the children alone or with someone else?
   • When you were raising children, was there a divorce, remarriage, death, or other?
   • Can you share what it was like to raise your family?
2. What were the original plans for raising a family?
   • Did you raise your family according to plan? Explain.
   • What about your original plans evolved? Explain.
   • Did you raise your children?
   • Did you raise the children of someone else?
   • Did you have a plan on how many children wanted to have? How did you conclude?
3. Where did you live at the time you are starting raising a family? Describe the area.
   • Where did the family live during the time you were raising children?
4. How many children were in your family?
   • Who were the children? Such as boy/girl, name.
   • How many years apart were they?
   • How would you describe each child? Such as personally, traits, talents, needs and more?
5. Who was the primary financial support for the family?
   • What were the sources of income?
   • How did the source of income change for the family?
   • How did changes in income affect the decision to raise a family?
6. What would you consider to be the most important values of your family?
   • Describe each value.
   • How did you help your children learn the value?
   • Can you give examples of how the values lived by your family?
   • How did family values change over time?
   • What do you consider the top three values? Explain.

7. What were some of the critical traditions of your family?
   • Describe each tradition.
   • How did the tradition begin?
   • Can you give examples of tradition?
   • How did the tradition change over time?
   • Want are your favorite memories?
8. What do you consider to be essential family rules?
   • Describe each rule?
   • How did the family rule begin?
   • What are your favorite memories?
9. How did you do as a parent when your children disobeyed?
   • Can you remember and share examples of disobedience and what you did to correct the child?
   • How did your family’s correction or discipline change over time?
10. Were any members of your family that had healthcare difficulties?
    • Describe the difficulties?
    • How did the family cope and support the difficulties?
    • What memories do you have?
    • Describe the difficulties?
    • How did the family cope and support the difficulties?
    • What memories do you have?
11. What are common physical traits that members of the family share?
12. Have any members of your family experienced discrimination, bullying or others?
    • What happened?
    • How did that affect the child?
    • How did that affect the family?
    • What if anything did you or the family do?
    • What was the outcome?
13. What were the everyday activities your family did together?
    • Describe the activity?
    • What are some of your favorite memories?
14. Describe a day in the life of your family?
    • When were your children small?
    • When were your children teenagers?
    • When was your family a mix of ages?

15. Was there ever a time in your family where there were emergencies? Such as accidents, health needs.
    • Describe each emergency.
    • How did the family deal with the emergency?
    • How did the family recover from the emergency?
16. What did your family do on vacations?
    • What were your favorite vacations? Explain.
17. Did your family ever experience a tragedy?
    • What was the tragedy?
    • How did the family cope with the tragedy?
    • What was the outcome of the tragedy?  Do you have other questions about raising a family during a tragedy?
18. What were the most memorable and special moments with your family?
    • Describe the memories of being with your family.
    • Describe memories of being with each child?
19. What were the holidays you spent as a family?
    • Describe each holiday.
    • What did your family do that made the day memorable?
    • What did you like and dislike?
    • What are your most memorable moments?
20. Was there ever a time when you were concerned for the safety of you you’re family?
    • What was the situation?
    • How did you address the concern?
    • What was the aftermath situation?
21. What were your favorite indoor activities with your family?
    • Describe the activity?
    • Why did you like family activities?
    • What are your memories?
22. What were your favorite indoor activities with your family?
    • Describe the activity?
    • Why did you like family activities?
    • What are your memories?
23. What were the best decisions you made on behalf of your family?
    • Describe each decision?
    • How did the decision benefit the family?
24. What were the worst decisions you made on behalf of your family?
    • Describe each decision?
    • How did the decision benefit the family?
25. How did you help your children learn responsibility?
    • Did your children have chores? If yes, explain?
    • Did the children have an allowance? Explain how that worked.
    • Did the children have opportunities to earn money? If yes, explain.
26. How would you describe the relationship with your spouse?
    • How did the relationship with effect your children?
27. Was there a time when one of your children helped you to become a better parent?
    • What happened?
    • How did the experience help you to become better?

28. What there the time a child seriously challenged your authority?
    • What happened?
    • How did you respond?
    • How did the child respond to you?
    • What was the outcome?
29. How did you teach your children about finances? Explain.
30. Did you homeschool or send your children to public schools?
    • What were the most memorable moments of your children being in school?
31. How did you spend time with your family?
    • What are your most memorable moments?
32. How did you spend time with individual members of your family?
    • What are your most memorable moments?
33. What are some of the experiences that brought more opportunities for your family to grow together?
    • Describe the experience.
    • How did the experience help your family grow?
    • What were the pros and cons of the experience?
34. Did any members of your family share personal or secrets with you?
    • If you are able, what was shared with you?
    • How did you respond to what was shared?
    • Did you need to help or take action to help the individual? If yes, how?
    • What the outcome of what you learned?
    • Did the experience provide an opportunity to strengthen the relationship with the individual?
35. What would you consider the most challenging part about being a parent? Explain.

1. What if anything do you do to learn principles of how to be a better parent?
   • Did you read books? If yes, explain.
   • Did you go to lectures and seminars? If yes, explain?
   • Did you counsel others outside of your family? If yes, explain.
2. Was religion a part of your family?
   • What is religion?
   • How did your family participate in the religion?
   • What did you like and dislike about religion for your family?
   • What are your memories? Do you have other questions about raising a family in religion?
3. Is there a time when you and your spouse/partner disagreed about managing a situation with your family?
   • What was the situation?
   • What did you disagree about?
   • How did you resolve the situation?
   • What was the outcome?
4. What were some of your proudest moments as a family?
5. What were some of your disappointing moments as a family?
6. Was there a time when you disappointed your family?
7. How did you’re your family spend time with your grandparents?
8. What were some of the most challenging issues you had to manage as a parent? Explain.
9. What do you consider the be the best influence for the good of your family? Explain.
10. What do you consider the be the worst influence on your family? Explain.
11. Describe how each member of your family made you proud of them?
12. Describe how each member of your family disappointed you?
    • Did you help them overcome the disappointment? How?
13. Do you have memories of having any serious arguments with family members?
    • What were the arguments about?
    • What was the outcome of the argument?
14. Did your children involved in actives like sports, dance, plays, singing and other activities? If yes, what?
    • How did the family support each person?
    • Did any of your children go away to college or the service?
15. As your children grew older, at what time did they leave home? Such as going to school, starting a family.
    • Describe the reason each child left home.
    • How did you feel about the child leaving home?
    • How did the family feel about the child leaving home?
16. What are the best parts of raising a family?
17. What would you like to have done differently when raising your family?
18. What is the best advice you ever received as a parent?
19. Who do you consider to be a mentor to you as a parent?
20. What other memories would you like to share about raising your family?
21. What did you like most and least about raising a family?
22. Do you have any other questions about raising a family that you would like to add?

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