Questions to ask your dad.

Because the stories children grow up with seem to matter. In an Emory University study that began just before 9/11 and ran for two years, children aged 10 to 12 whose families told more coherent, emotionally open stories about hard times coped better over those two years. They had better self-esteem, higher social competence, higher-quality friendships and less anxiety and stress.

And because many families have a handful of stories Dad always tells: the car that broke down, the boss he stood up to. The questions below go underneath those, to the parts nobody has thought to ask him about.

Start with places, people and things he can picture.

Your dad may be the last person who remembers his father and grandfather at work and at home. If his father was a young man in the late 1940s or the 1950s, National Service may be part of the story. The National Army Museum explains that from 1949 it applied to all able-bodied men aged 17 to 21. It began at 18 months, rose to two years in 1950 during the Korean War, and took in more than 2 million men before the last National Serviceman was discharged on 14 June 1963.

Work can be the easiest way in, because it is about what he did rather than how he felt. Money is a good thread too. Decimal Day, 15 February 1971, changed the pound from 240 pennies to 100, the Royal Mint records, so if he was earning or shopping before then, he will have known prices in shillings and pence.

Fathers are older than they used to be: the Office for National Statistics puts the average age of fathers in England and Wales at 34.0 in 2025, and says it has been rising since 1976. Time off has changed too. The Employment Act 2002 brought in a right to two weeks’ paid paternity leave from 2003, so if you were born before then, ask how much time he had off, and who decided.

These are the stories only he can tell you.

Father’s Day began in Spokane, Washington. HistoryLink records that Sonora Smart Dodd, whose widowed father had raised her and her five younger brothers, had the idea in 1909, and that the first Father’s Day was celebrated there on 19 June 1910.

In the US it became law when President Nixon signed P.L. 92-278 on 24 April 1972, designating the third Sunday in June, according to the US House of Representatives. The UK keeps the same Sunday, which is 20 June in 2027.

Father’s Day is a good excuse, but the best conversations often happen when you are doing something else together:

In the Ancestorii app you can send him one of 46 ready-made questions in 10 chapters, including Work & Purpose and Music & Hobbies, where one asks: ‘There’s always a song that brings someone straight to mind. Which one, and who?’ You can also write your own, so any question on this page will do.

The question travels as a time-limited link. He answers in the free iPhone or Android app when he’s ready, and you get an email when he does; if he already uses the app and hasn’t answered after 24 hours, he gets one reminder. His answer is saved as a memory in your family’s private My Family feed, where your brothers and sisters can add their own memory of the same moment. See how family questions work.

If he would rather talk than type, record him telling it and add it yourself, with the voice note attached. Our guide to capturing family voices explains why the sound of him is worth keeping.

Alison, in Nevada, made a Memory Book for her dad from years of family photos. In her words: ‘I walked past my dad’s room and caught him looking through his memory book again. That’s the third time this week.’

For Father’s Day, a printed Memory Book is an A4 landscape hardcover of 24, 36 or 48 pages, from £44.99 plus delivery, and a Memory Canvas starts at £99.99 plus delivery. Standard delivery is quoted at 10 to 14 working days, so order at least three weeks ahead. For his parents’ generation, see how to interview your grandparents, and for the other side of the family, questions to ask your mum.