Editorial Policy

Last Updated: August 19, 2026

This page explains how articles on SelfLoveMom are researched, checked, dated and corrected. It is the standard we hold ourselves to, and the one you should hold us to. If an article on this site does not meet it, please tell us and we will fix it.

1. Who Writes Here

Every article carries a byline. The writer named at the top of a page is accountable for what is in it, and their name links to a page listing everything else they have written for us.

We are writers and researchers, not licensed professionals. Nothing here is medical, legal, financial or therapeutic advice. Where a decision needs a professional, we say so and point you toward one. See our disclaimer for the full terms.

2. Where Our Numbers Come From

We use primary sources. For benefits, grants and money, that means the agency that administers the program: Census Bureau tables, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, USDA, HHS, state agency pages. For health and psychology, it means peer reviewed research and the government health agencies, read in full text rather than from the abstract.

Another article is never a source. If a figure reaches us through a blog, a news write up or an aggregator, we treat that as a lead and go find the original table before we print anything.

When we cite a statistic we name the publishing body, the report or table it comes from, the year the data covers, and the date we retrieved it. You should be able to open the source and find the exact row.

3. How We Check a Figure

Four questions get asked of every number before it publishes:

1. Does the source actually say this? Not the summary, not the press release, the source document itself.
2. Is it still the current figure? Agencies revise. A number that was right in 2023 may have been superseded twice since.
3. Is it named correctly? A mean is not a median. Families are not households are not children. An amount owed is not an amount received.
4. What is the base population? A rate means nothing until you know who is in the denominator.

Most published errors on the topics we cover are not invented. They are inherited: a correct figure attached to the wrong label, the wrong year or the wrong group. That fourth question catches more mistakes than the other three combined.

4. Dates and Updates

Every article shows when it was published and when it was last updated. We update articles in place rather than republishing them under a new date, so the URL you bookmarked keeps working.

Benefit amounts, income limits and program rules change on their own schedules. When we revisit an article we re-open every source rather than trusting what we wrote last time, because a link that still loads is not proof that the page behind it still says the same thing.

5. Corrections

If we get something wrong, we fix it and we do not quietly delete it. Factual corrections are made within 48 hours of being confirmed. Broken links are repaired by the end of the week.

To report an error, use our contact page with the article URL and what looks wrong. Corrections from readers are welcome and we do not need you to be certain before you write.

6. How We Use AI

We use AI tools in research and drafting, the way most publications now use them. We think you are entitled to know that rather than to a claim that would not be true.

What we do not do is publish that output unchecked. Every figure is traced back to the source document and its table before it goes near a draft, and every article passes a fixed pre-publish review covering facts, sources, links and readability. A named writer is accountable for the result either way.

7. How We Make Money, and What It Does Not Buy

We run display advertising and some affiliate links. An ad network chooses the ads, not us. No advertiser sees an article before it publishes and none has any say in what we cover.

We do not sell links, we do not accept paid guest posts, and we do not insert paid links into existing articles. Our full funding breakdown is on the about page.

8. Images

Photographs are licensed stock or our own. We do not present a stock photograph as a specific person, family or event. Charts are drawn by us from the source data named in the caption.

9. Reader Privacy

What we collect, why, and how to get it removed is set out in our privacy policy. The newsletter has one click unsubscribe in every email and we never sell subscriber data.

Questions About This Policy

Write to us at info@selflovemom.com. A real person reads every message.