Submit your stuff to Offbeat Mama

This is where you can learn how to submit photos or words to Offbeat Mama. If you just want to say hello, click here. If you're a business owner looking for placement, click here.

If you're a photographer who would like to submit photos, the easiest thing to do is just put them in our gallery

Offbeat Mama is about celebrating and inspiring nontraditional families, and so we're always looking for words & photos from folks from a wide range of backgrounds, lifestyles, and experiences. We believe family takes many forms — this means biological, adoptive, and step parents. This means straight, gay, bi, and trans parents AND kids. This means nuclear and extended families. This means babies, kids, teens, and grown-up issues.

Please note: We do NOT accept guestposts from SEO marketing companies or writers representing commercial websites.

• Balancing offbeat interests with the time constraints of family life
• Trying to conceive/deciding how and when to become parents
• Perspectives from offbeat families of color
• LGBT mamas and queer families
• How-tos for kid craft and DIY projects
• Getting outside/having fun with your kids
• Birthday parties
• Perspectives from offbeat aunties, grandmas, and other non-bio caregivers
• Non-biological parent stories — step-parents and adoptive parents especially!

• Defensiveness We're not especially interested in stories about how you feel judged, someone looked at you funny, etc. We all deal with this challenge, but we think there's more to be gained from celebrating than commiserating.
• Commiseration & Ranting We know parenting is frustrating. We know it can be sad. While we touch on these difficult subjects, our focus is on celebrating the parts that are awesome, and inspiring families to find more joy in their lives.
• Dogma It's awesome that you feel strongly about your parenting philosophy, but we're not into absolutes when it comes to parenting.
• "Hi, My Name Is" Posts We get a lot of submissions that are essentially just an introduction — "Hi, my name is Jane, and here's how I'm an offbeat mama." While we loooove getting to know our readers, the posts we choose to publish are typically articles with a very specific focus .

• It's fine to submit something that you wrote for your own personal blog — we'll be sure to link to your original post!
• Get familiar with our values before submitting — we're looking for positive stories and just are not into being ranty, dogmatic, reactionary, or judgmental.
• Blog posts should be 500-1000 words
• You don't need to be a professional writer, but your post should have a specific focus other than introducing yourself, and be conscientious about capitalization, proofreading, spell check, etc.
• Posts may be edited for length and tone.

These most common reasons for post rejection:

• Reveals overly personal family issues, perhaps without family member consent
• Veers into medical or mental health issues, causing issues of liability
• Overly dogmatic or judgmental toward other philosophies
• Fiction, poetry, or otherwise not a format we publish
• Too similar to a recently-run post
• Written by SEO marketing firm or writer representing a commercial site

Please note: while we can't publish all submissions we receive, we love reading every single one. You'll hear from us if we're going to publish your guest post!

Now it's time to submit your post…