Submission Guidelines

Writer's Guidelines
Photographer's Guidelines

Writer's Guidelines

Thank you. We greatly appreciate your interest in writing for Mothering. Our magazine is based on a foundation of reader-submitted work. We welcome unsolicited articles, and we encourage you to familiarize yourself with our publishing goals.

Our main objective is to be truly helpful, to provide information that empowers our readers to make changes, and supports them in being their own experts. We like articles that have a strong point of view and come from the heart, that are challenging or evocative. We also take pride in publishing well-researched, extensively documented articles. When submitting this type of article, please use only the most updated research, from primary sources. Our choice of articles depends on the other material we have published on the subject, how new the topic is to us, and how unique the presentation is. It helps if you include photos.

Familiarize yourself with Mothering. We are more likely to publish your article if you are a Mothering reader and are familiar with the issues we discuss. Think about the subjects you know well, and those that are not over-exposed. The "Your Letters" section of the magazine is a good place to find topics of interest to our readers. Mothering is a bi-monthly publication with an international readership of more than 250,000. We regularly cover the following subject areas:

The Art of Mothering focuses on the inspirational and spiritual side of nurturing. Here is where we share ideas and philosophies that help us to be the kinds of parents we want to be.

Health explores new approaches to health care for the whole family. We welcome coverage of a wide range of topics, encouraging articles on approaches to common childhood health questions that incorporate integrative medicine.

A Child's World contains articles that reflect the world as a child sees it. In this section, we especially like to feature activities, crafts, arts, music, and stories for children.

Pregnancy, Birth and Midwifery features all aspects of pregnancy and birth as well as actual experiences and stories of childbirth. While we regularly feature homebirth stories, we welcome stories of birth in a variety of settings. We also like to feature stories of freestanding birth centers. We like well-researched articles on the politics of childbirth and how-tos on avoiding unnecessary medical intervention. Inspirational, practical, and advocacy articles are welcome.

Breastfeeding We regularly publish articles on breastfeeding. We like stories of moms overcoming obstacles to breastfeeding, how-to articles on breastfeeding, and breastfeeding advocacy articles.

Ways of Learning features articles on innovative, multidimensional, people-centered approaches to education. This section focuses on how people learn as well as where they learn, and includes learning about traditional subjects as well as subjects usually thought of as outside the realm of education: responsibility, ethics, adventure, travel, intuition, spirituality. We want to know about new, as well as rediscovered "old," ways of learning, with attention to schools and methods that support the full potential of the human child.

Family Living contains informative, general interest stories that share helpful hints, practical suggestions, and insights into the daily realities of parenting.

Peggy's Kitchen is our recipes section. Recent topics include Winter Soups, a toddler cooking class, and holiday-themed recipes. Generally, an introductory block of text of about a thousand words is followed by 5-7 recipes.

Poetry We publish at least one poem in each issue. Please send us no more than three poems at a time. Poems can be submitted directly to Candace Walsh, our poetry editor, at candacew@mothering.com, as an MS Word attachment(do not send them in a zip file). Please include your name, mailing address, phone number, and email address with your submission. We generally do not print rhyming poetry.

Web Publication Our site hosts a mix of content from prior magazine issues, as well as web exclusives. Articles may be submitted via email to webarticles@mothering.com in consideration for exclusive web publication. The added venue of our website offers us the chance to publish new online content weekly. Articles submitted to the magazine may also be considered for web publication.

Queries. We encourage you to send a query if you are unsure of our interest in the topic of your article. A query is a one-page specific description and outline of your article. You can query us on more than one topic at a time.

Length: We recommend that essays run 1,500 to 2,500 words. Longer, researched articles can be up to 3,500 words.

Fact Checking Your article will be scrupulously fact-checked before being published in Mothering. Therefore, we require that your research be as current as possible. You should source actual published studies, not books in which the studies are quoted. The latter is called a secondary reference, and is not reliable. Your research should also be organized and readily available, so you will be able to respond to fact-checkers questions quickly and accurately.

Double-space your manuscript and leave wide side margins for possible notations. When submitting an electronic file, please save your article as a Word Document and e-mail it as an attachment. We accept hard copy submissions in the mail, but prefer to receive submissions via email.

E-mail: candacew@mothering.com
Mail: Candace Walsh, Articles Editor, PO Box 1690, Santa Fe, NM 87504
Fax: Candace at 505-986-8335

Please do not send us an article that you have already submitted elsewhere unless you have had the article returned or have heard that it is not going to be used. Please, also, do not send book-length manuscripts. We prefer to publish only original material, but will occasionally publish excerpts from books.

Keep a copy of your article. We will return mailed submissions after consideration only if a SASE is included with your submission.

Please include a brief bionote (1-2 sentences) at the end of your submission, so that we can print it if your article is used.

Please include your name, address, phone number, and e-mail address on the first page of your manuscript, as well as your name and the page number on each subsequent page. Include your phone number and e-mail with all correspondence.

Our procedure is to read and respond to articles within four to six weeks of receiving them. This can be a long time to wait, especially if you are eager for a reply. Please be patient. Contact us if you wish to inquire about your manuscript before hearing from us.

Once an article is received and we retain it, we may want to keep it for up to a year; we plan quite a bit in advance and may have already selected articles for upcoming issues before we receive your article. Final decisions are made only after all articles on hand are evaluated. Even when an article is selected for an issue, it may be pulled for lack of space. These uncertainties make it difficult for us to be as specific in our acceptance as we would like; we appreciate your understanding of this creative process. We try not to keep an article longer than 6 months because, although we may like it, we feel it should have a chance in another market.

Our hardest task is returning articles that we cannot use. We try to be honest in our replies, but it is not always possible to provide in-depth feedback. We evaluate all articles in light of the other articles we have on hand, when last we covered the subject, and our readers' interest in the subject matter. We retain only a small percentage of the articles we receive. Returning a manuscript is not a personal rejection; it is a practical consideration. We encourage you to submit your manuscript elsewhere if we cannot accept it.

We pay between $200 and $500 for a magazine article, the amount to be negotiated at the time it is selected for and laid out in an issue. Payment is made 90 days from publication date for one-time use of the article. In addition to payment, all authors receive a one-year complimentary subscription to Mothering and two copies of the issue in which their article is published. Inquire if you would like additional copies.

We accept articles on a speculative basis so even if we have expressed an interest in, or given you the go-ahead on, a proposed article, we cannot guarantee its publication.

Photographer's Guidelines

If you would like to submit a photo, you may send us photocopies, reprints, digital photos, or low-resolution scans of your work. (If we decide to use a photo in the magazine, we will ask for the original.)

You may email a digital file to us at laurat@mothering.com, or mail photocopies or reprints to Laura Egley Taylor, Mothering, P.O. Box 1690, Santa Fe, NM 87504.

Regarding payment for photos: amounts vary based on the size the photo is used, whether the photo was solicited, whether the photo is part of an article package, etc. Photos that run in our “Your Letters” section usually are submitted as correspondence and are not paid for.