Do you write about parenting through humor, how-to, essays or service pieces? If your writing is directed at the parents of babies, tots, tweens, teens, or adult children, there are many places to get published... and paid!
As the summer months approach, publishing beyond your personal blog can be a great way to generate some income and direct readers over to your own site, plus it helps keep the momentum going as vacations and kids threaten to slow your roll in the blogosphere.
Image: Money Savings via Flickr via Creative Commons license
Niche Parenting Sites
If you write about adoption and want to reach other adoptive families with your writing, consider submitting your advice and stories to Adoptive Families. This quarterly digital magazine and website publishes articles and essays on every aspect of adoption from deciding to adopt and personal adoption stories, to focus pieces on topics like special needs adoption and transracial adoption.
Be sure to read through their guidelines for full details. Payment will be negotiated upon acceptance, and while a scale is not made public, they note that it is in line with other small magazine rate scales.
If you have a Jewish perspective on parenting, Kveller may be the place for your writing. This parenting site is looking for "...personal, narrative-driven essays about parenting and women's issues written from a Jewish lens, though not every piece needs an explicit tie-in to Judaism."
Mayim Bialik of Big Bang Theory fame writes a great column for them, and if they are good enough for Amy Farrah Fowler, they are good enough for me! While you won't find a huge payday here, they do pay $25 per accepted piece with the potential for a bit more if you write for them frequently.
For those who write about parenting as a Christian, Focus on The Family's Thriving Family is looking for your writing that takes a biblical perspective on parenting. Practical ideas for parents and exploration of specific parenting issues/challenges are just a few of the perspectives your submission might take.
TF's guidelines detail payment more thoroughly, but 25 cents per word is the going rate for most sections.
If you write about safety as it relates to parenting, there are a couple of great paying options out there. Whether your child is a passenger or the driver, Car Seats To Keys focuses on auto-related safety information for moms from moms. This is a very niche parenting site, and is a project created in conjunction with a corporate partner, CarStory.
It may seem that topics are limited, but looking over some of the article titles on this site might inspire you to take a different angle with your submission to Content Strategist Katya Delaney. While Car Seats does not pay for short posts, longer pieces are paid on a sliding scale based on experience and research involved.
Since we're talking about safety, we have to mention Kids Safety Network. This site publishes your child safety articles covering anything from product recalls and personal experiences, to accident prevention and more, so you can write about a wide range of topics including safety in the areas of home, health, travel, technology and sports.
A friendly tone with lots of information presented in a non-jargon-y way is right at home here and explained in full detail on their Write For Us page. They include a link to your website or blog with your published piece and pay $25-$50 per post.
Offering both online and print opportunities to writers, Your Teen magazine is looking for articles and essays about teens and tweens. Managing Editor Diana Simeon is eager to find writers who can write for them regularly, so if you are looking to become a regular contributor to a publication, this is a great place to submit your best work!
Your Teen guidelines include details for where to send your pitches and payment is typically 50 cents per word for print (higher for repeat writers) and $50 per essay published on their blog.
Another publication that loves to publish great writing about raising teens is Grown & Flown. This started out as a personal blog run by two women and after much success expanded to start accepting outside submissions in 2015. Grown & Flown is one of very few sites focused on the specific niche of parenting kids ages 15 to 25, or young adults, and offers a quick turnaround of a week or less with submissions.
G&F's Write For Us page will give you ideal word count and other guidelines, and payment is negotiated separately with each writer.
If your niche covers things like babywearing, home education, and alternative medicine, or other green topics, consider UK print publication The Green Parent. TGP is the leading green lifestyle and natural parenting magazine in the UK. Their guidelines indicate payment of £75 per 1000 Words.
If you homeschool your kids, Home|School|Life magazine is a publication for consideration. Described as "creative, playful, and informed as the best homeschool days," HSL is looking for very specific pitches (not completed articles) from people familiar with the tone and quality of the work they publish. The guidelines for this quarterly print magazine note that payment is negotiated separately with each writer.
General Parenting Sites
Have you been reading along wondering where your humor and thoughtful pieces about parenting that don't always fall into a niche might find a home?
Did you know that BlogHer accepts pitches of syndicated and original material for their Family section? Yep, you have reached your destination! BlogHer's huge reach can get you in front of the right audience for your writing and their social media and newsletter promotion can provide an additional boost in visibility.
Keep in mind that as one of BlogHer's most popular sections, Family can be a competitive section to pitch, so come with your freshest ideas. Coverage is broad, so anything from opinion pieces to personal essays and tips can work. You can send parenting submissions to the Family Section Editor, Nicole Blades. If accepted, you can typically expect $50 per post.
Imperfect Parent is looking for submissions that will either make you think or make you laugh. Good luck finding any parenting topic NOT covered on this site. Be sure to read the Submission Guidelines before sending in your work, and note that their sliding scale starts at $25 and goes up from there.
If you are looking for a site that is experiencing huge growth and potential for large exposure, don't overlook Parent.co. In an interview with Beyond Your Blog, Editor-in-Chief Edward Shepard discusses their goal of one million views per month by the end of 2016, so this second-year site is definitely going places.
Parent.co wants writing not necessarily about parenting, but rather, about being a parent. While they run articles on all sorts of topics, check out their killer post 30 Questions to Ask Your Kid Instead of "How Was Your Day?", which has brought in over 3 million views to date for a taste of what their audience likes.
Be sure to read through their submission guidelines for full details on payment. The short of it is that Parent.co writers earn $50-$100 per post and are also eligible for social sharing incentive bonuses up to $300 AND a monthly $500 Editor's Prize. Not too shabby.
Disney's "destination for parenting" is its popular site Babble. This is often cited by parenting bloggers as a wish list publication. Because they receive so many pitches, it can be hard to get an editor's attention, so reading the site regularly to see what resonates with their audience is key to crafting a Babble-worthy pitch.
Remember, you're dealing with Disney here, so no f-bombs! If you want to write for Babble, be sure to follow their guidelines and be aware that bloggers have reported being asked to write up to three unpaid articles prior to becoming a paid contributor at $75 - $150 per article.
While we are talking about parenting sites that cover a broad range of topics, one of the best known parenting sites for parents who are not perfect, is Scary Mommy. Known for insanely viral posts, for most parenting bloggers Scary Mommy is either a site they have written for or one they want to write for.
While you are not promised a viral post, it is considered a feather in the cap for bloggers who write humorous, opinionated and/or heartfelt stories about parenting. If you want to write for Scary Mommy, be prepared for at least a few rejections unless you have beginners luck. Even some of their regular contributors went through many rejections before getting their first acceptance on the site. Payment is $100 for accepted original posts.
Known as "The Magazine for Thinking Mothers", Brain, Child brings together many voices of motherhood into a literary setting. You won't find typical blog post formatted pieces on this site, but rather, carefully crafted essays about all aspects of parenthood.
While there are paying opportunities to write for their annual print publication Brain, Teen, the majority of paid writing opportunities are for their themed blog series pieces, for which they reportedly pay $40. While you will find humor on the site, the pieces they are best known for are beautifully written, empathy-enducing personal stories you won't find anywhere else (read The Last Stories and you'll know what I'm talking about). Check submission guidelines for full details and to access submittable, where all current calls will be listed.
Millennials! I have not forgotten about you. You make up a huge percentage of new parents, so Romper was created just for you. This site is an offshoot of well-known women's site Bustle to devote a larger space to parenting content than they had on their site.
In an interview with Beyond Your Blog, Senior Features Editor Kylie McConville shares Romper's interest in finding new writing voices for their team and mentions opportunities for full-time (remote!) editorial/writing positions. Kylie lays out exactly what their editorial team wants to see in "How To Pitch Romper", and writers report being paid $50 per post.
You can't really have a list like this without mentioning one of the most coveted parenting publications around. On Parenting is The Washington Post's acclaimed parenting blog that publishes strong essays often featuring some amount of reporting to support the stories being told.
The Washington Post's preferred method for submission is for you to apply to their Talent Network and pitch there if accepted. Be prepared to wait months in some cases for approval/rejection from the network, but if you get in it will be worth it as you are able to directly pitch pieces for consideration to any section of the Post. On Parenting Editor Amy Joyce shared a rate of $100 per essay in a 2015 interview, though some authors have reported more.
If you are looking to start working with a newer publication and grow with them, Motherwell just launched in May of 2016 telling "all sides of the parenting story." While this site is very young, they started out on the right foot by paying writers $50 per accepted piece. While personal essays seem to be their sweet spot, they are also looking for opinion and even dialogue pieces (written by two authors). Check out Motherwell's submissions page for the latest.
Are any of these next on your writing submission list?
Please note that payment information can and often does change, so you'll want to check submission guidelines or with an editor for current rates. Please also note that rate information listed in this article is assuming original work that has not been previously published.
Susan Maccarelli of Beyond Your Blog