Write for The New York Times Parenting Outlet

Jessica Grose informed me that she is not the lead editor in the Parenting department at this time. She also says these guidelines are not what they are looking for anymore, but she doesn't know exactly what they need. This is the post that is still live, unfortunately!

"I am thrilled to announce the NYT Parenting newsletter! For the next month or so, we'll be publishing the newsletter and a handful of articles each week. Then in early May, we will launch a beautiful, robust website. We'll be covering fertility and pregnancy up through kids age 5 or 6 and your lives with them, and giving you evidence-based guidance, news, and personal stories every day. It is my sincerest hope that the site will prevent you from a panicked 3 am google that lands you on a BabyCenter message board telling you that crystals and essential oils will heal your baby's rickets. The full site launches in May.

For general submissions please send to: parenting_submissions@nytimes.com

Rates depend on the type of piece.

What is NYTParenting?

Modeled after what the Times did with NYTCooking, NYTParenting will be a robust section of the Times website (parenting.nytimes.com) with new and archival content and a newsletter. NYTParenting is set to launch in Spring 2019.

We will mostly cover topics ranging from fertility and pregnancy to kids through ages 5 or 6, but we'll also be doing a lot of coverage on issues that affect parents of young children. 

We will have articles and essays, as well as guides — which are a content form with a specific structure and which are meant to answer thorny parenting problems in a service-y, research-backed way. For now, we’re mostly coming up with ideas for guides in-house.

A bit about us, philosophically:

• We are for parents who want evidence-based solutions to problems with their kids or with their own lives. We recognize that you had a baby — not a lobotomy. Your wants and needs still matter.
• We are for mothers AND fathers. Almost all parenting products are explicitly or implicitly gendered. Through design, editorial choices and framing, we will not be. We recognize that every family is different, and we are mindful of that.

What we're looking for:

Essays and articles in the 1,000 to 1,200-word range.

For articles, we're looking for timely ideas, whether they're cultural or trendy (What's the next baby shark? Why is everyone feeding their kid European formula?), based on new studies and how they affect parents (Are you really supposed to monitor your kid while they brush their teeth til they're 8?), or second-day stories on news events (How does family separation affect brain development?).

While we cover fertility through age 6, and will assign on topics affecting kids and parents in that range, we are especially focusing on the following topics in the near term for essays:

--How parenting has changed your identity, or how your identity has intersected with your parenting experience
--Relationships (with your partner, with your parents or in-laws, with your friends, with your first child when you have a second...)
--Life with babies and toddlers

We're also trying out an essay series called The Hardest Part

The Hardest Part will be a series of essays about the parts of parenting that you’ve found to be the most unexpectedly difficult, and how you worked through them (or didn't).

The tone can be as serious or as funny as the subject matter requires. It can be as straightforward as, "The hardest part of parenting is dealing with my kids during the winter," or "The hardest part of parenting is handling my kid's severe allergies," or as esoteric as, "The hardest part of parenting is how emotionally spent I feel at the end of each day.""

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