Interview #1 Subject

I have chosen to conduct an interview with my own mother. I realized that there are several other women that I could pick, and choosing my mother seems like the easy choice. However, the reason I want to interview my mother is because she has a very interesting story about working and raising my brother and I. She had me when she was young, still in college, and unmarried. She had my brother four years later after she was out of college, and married to my father. My mother has worked at least one job my whole life, sometimes two. In my adolescent years, she went back to college for a master’s degree. My whole life she has been an inspiration to me, and I can only hope to be as strong and as successful as she has become. She is one of the most intelligent and beautiful women I know. Now, I would like to learn what all those years of working and raising my brother and I were like for her. She never let us see how it affected her, but now that I am older I would like to know what it was like working full time with an infant at home and being as young as she was.

For the interview, I am going to ask my mom to take a look back in time. I want her to remember, and expand on what her life was like when my brother and I were young (under 14). Right now, I am 20 years old and my little brother is 16 years old so we are fairly self sufficient and have been for quite some time. I feel that the most important piece to look at is when we were young, and need the most care. Most of the question asked will be regarding what she considered the toughest years for her, and our family in general. Obviously I will be asking her the normal questions like her age, marital status, and education level (even though I already know the answers). Then I will want to know what ages my brother and I were when life was the toughest for her? What were we like at that time? What kinds of things did we enjoy? How did these things affect our lives and care? What was her work status at that time? Where did you work? How many hours per week? How did your work life change after having children? Were you working before your child was born? How long did it take to go back? What were our child care arrangements? What was raising us like? What was our relationship like at the time? What was hardest for her at the time? What was my father’s role in our lives at the time? What other adults did we spend significant time with? How did this affect your relationship with your husband? If you could go back and change something, would you? And what would it be?