Windows to the past, frames of the present

Oral history interviews about upbringing illuminate past childhoods while also revealing the interpretive frameworks through which those childhoods are remembered. This article examines that dual temporality through an analysis of 316 interviews with three Dutch generations (raised 1920–2015) recorded between 2012 and 2015. The findings show that educational discourses influential at the time of interviewing – shaped by psychological concepts, theories and forms of reasoning, the ideal of authoritative parenting, the perceived need for expert knowledge, and a widely circulating narrative of a shift from “strict” to “soft” parenting – coloured how participants described and evaluated their upbringing. In addition, these interpretive frames were shaped by the participants’ social roles at the time of narration, as grandparents, parents, or young people. By approaching oral histories not simply as windows onto the past but as layered narratives shaped by historical and present-day forces, this study encourages methodological awareness and offers researchers clues for recognising the entanglement of past and present. It argues that such recognition depends on close attention to the cultural-historical context of both the upbringing recalled and the interview through which it is narrated

Ethnic group · Frame (networking · Identification (biology · Oral history · Qualitative research · Autobiographical and Biographical Writing · Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy · Oral History, Memory, Narrative Analysis