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What we can publish, and what we cannot

Written plainly, because it is easier to write something we can publish if you know the boundaries before you start.

Back to the submission form

What we are looking for

Anything from raising your baby — skin, sleep, feeding, routines, the season everything went wrong. This space is not limited to skincare.
Your own experience, in your own words. What you noticed, what you tried, what changed.
The parts that did not work, as much as the parts that did. Those are more useful.
Specific detail — the season, the city, your baby’s age at the time. Hard water in Chennai is a different story from Shillong.
Between 300 and 1,500 words. Shorter is fine if it says what it needs to.

What we cannot publish, and why

Treatment advice. “Do this for your baby’s eczema” — we are a company selling baby products, and publishing that would be us giving medical advice through someone else’s voice.
Cure or claim language. Cured, healed, eliminated, permanently fixed. However true it felt, it becomes a claim the moment it sits on our website.
Other brand names. Ours or anyone else’s. Describe what you used in plain terms instead — “a thick barrier cream” rather than a product name.
Photographs of your baby. We do not publish images of children who cannot consent to it. Text only.
Anything that reads as a review. If it sounds like a testimonial, it stops being a parent’s story and becomes advertising. That is not what this section is for.

How your name appears

You choose, per piece: full name, first name and city, or anonymous as “a parent in Chennai”.
We also publish your baby’s age at the time, because it tells readers whether the piece applies to them.
You can change your mind, and you can ask us to take a piece down at any point, without giving a reason.

What happens after you send it

You get an acknowledgement immediately, with a reference number.
We read it ourselves — Karthik and Janani, not an agency.
You hear back within ten working days, whatever we decide.
If we want to publish, we send you the edited version first. Nothing goes live until you have seen it and said yes.
If we cannot publish it, we tell you the actual reason rather than going quiet.

One thing we will not do

We will not edit your story into an advertisement for us.
If a piece needs so much changing that it stops sounding like you, we will decline it instead.
That is a worse outcome for us than for you, and it is still the right one.

Ready?

The form takes about fifteen minutes if you have already written something, longer if you are starting from scratch. You can save nothing and come back — so write it somewhere else first if that is easier.

Write for Voice of Parents