Jumping ahead of the genealogical survey step

I meet people almost every day who are trying to do research on their family, but know little or nothing about the subject, that is, their family. I decided to put together a list of three basic questions you should ask yourself (or others) to find out if you are going to be successful in finding your family members. I find a huge spectrum of knowledge about families, from those who do not know their own parents (and were not adopted) to those who claim lineages back to Adam??

Here go the three questions:

1. Who are your parents? Where and when were they born? When and where were they married?

I realize this is a compound question, but it is aimed at the most basic family history information. Try these questions on your own children and random friends, you may be surprised at the answers. I also realize that there are a huge variety of family circumstances, single parents, divorced parents, adoptions, foster parents and many more variations. Each of these give its own difficulties, but how can you go back in time if you don't know your parents.

2. Can you name all four (or more in the case of divorce or death and remarriage) of your grandparents? I mean their complete names with the maiden names of the grandmothers. Of course, you would go on with the same information about your grandparents, birth, marriage and perhaps death. What's more important, can you do this without looking at a cheat sheet aka family group record or pedigree chart?

Another compound question, but how do you do family history if you don't know basic information about your grandparents. I am not being sarcastic, I really do talk to people almost every day who expect to do their family history without knowing anything about their own grandparents.

OK here goes question No. 3:

3. Remember those first two questions? How about the same questions about your great-grandparents?

I hope you see the point. knowledge about your family is incremental. You can't jump generations and have any possibility of coming to correct or reliable conclusions. It might happen that someone else has already done the work to record your immediate ancestors. If so, and you believe them, your first level work is started. But you really need to get to know the people, not just names. Meanwhile, I still have one friend who knows his father's name and nothing else and isn't particularly interested in finding out. I predict he will not go far in the genealogical community.