How to Write for Family Matters
Guidelines and how to submit your work
Welcome to Family Matters!
Before submitting your work, please take the time to read the guidelines below. You may also find our FAQ section helpful.
About Family Matters
We are a family-run publication and a supportive space for writers to share their experiences on family and parenting. Whether you’re a parent to be, a single parent, co-parenting, have adopted children, grandchildren, step-children, have interesting family stories to tell, want to share your experiences of having an unsupportive family to help others feel less alone…we want to hear from you!
About Us
Family Matters is run by Laura Fox and her husband, David Fox. They have a daughter called Imogen, affectionately known as Immy for short.
The editors are Laura’s sisters, Kathryn and Lucy. We really are a family-run publication and want to make our writers and readers feel like part of the family too!
Laura has mental health problems and writes about her experiences as a mother who is recovering from postnatal depression and healing from a traumatic childhood. She hopes she can help other parents with similar experiences feel less alone.
David has cerebral palsy and writes about parenting with a physical disability. Not only does this help other parents with disabilities feel less alone, but it also challenges the stereotypes around people living with a physical disability.
Meet the Editors/Family
Kathryn Morris
I’m a writer, book worm, and mother. I like to write about mental health, parenting, and how we can be better people for the next generation.
I’m also the co-editor for The Brave Writer and my passion is writing.
I am currently working on my first book, a middle-grade fantasy novel.
Lucy Morris
I’m a History graduate and all-round nerd. Here on Medium, I write about books, social justice, queerness, and survival — things that I see as deeply intertwined.
Submission Guidelines
Stories must be tagged with Family or Parenting. You can also tag your story with one or more of the following and it will appear under the relevant tab on the homepage.
- Special Needs
- Education
- Mental Health
Please note that we won’t accept submission just because they are tagged under these categories unless they are written from a family and/or parenting angle.
If your piece is in response to the monthly prompt, please include the tag “prompt”.
We pride ourselves on being a publication where readers and writers feel supported. Parents often feel judged and most of our readers are parents. Please make sure your work isn’t of a judging or shaming nature. The sort of articles we accept are:
- Well-written with limited spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. We understand it’s easy to miss things in your own writing (especially if you are distracted by parenting duties) so one or two errors are fine. But we expect you to proofread your own work before you submit it.
- Have something to teach the reader. We don’t accept drafts that are like diary entries. You need to write for the reader. Is your piece relatable? And if it’s about a unique issue, does it have valuable knowledge to give to the reader? Is there an actionable takeaway message?
- Are specific to parenting and family. We do not accept drafts that have nothing to do with these topics.
- Have links to sources. Some articles may not need these, but if you are stating a point such as “children benefit from their parents reading to them” then you need to find a source to back that up.
- Have specific titles that tell the reader exactly what the article is about. People are less likely to click on vague titles such as “Divorce.” A better title would be “How Divorce Has Impacted My Family.”
- We do not accept poetry.
Please allow up to 48 hours for your draft to be published, pending any changes an editor asks you to make. If any changes need to be made to your draft, we will leave private notes explaining how you can make these changes.
We have a section on our homepage called “Best of” where we select the best articles of the month. If you would like to read examples of articles that fit our publication, we recommend you browse that section.
As always, follow Medium’s Curation Guidelines when submitting your work.
How to Submit
If you would like to write for us, please send a link to an unpublished draft to laurafoxwriter@gmail.com. We do not accept pieces that are already published.
Please allow up to seven days for your draft to be reviewed.
If your draft is of good quality and fits our publication, we will add you as a writer. This means you can add your Medium drafts to our publication and we will publish them for you, pending any changes you need to make or whether your piece is a fit for Family Matters.
If you have any questions that have not been answered in our FAQ section, please comment below and we will happily answer them.
We are looking forward to reading your stories!
Join the Family Matters Facebook Group and follow us on Twitter.
Guidelines revised 01.01.2021
