Inside the Glamorous World of Baby Modeling

Ronnie Johnson's daughter Rayne is only 1 year old, but so far, she's made $4,600. She's worked with brands like Carter's, Adidas, and Amazon as a baby model, and her image has been featured across the internet and in stores.

When Johnson first saw her daughter's seven-foot poster displayed in her local Carter's, she couldn't contain herself. "I let out a loud scream right there in the store, and found myself jumping, crying, and even shaking with excitement," she tells PS. She captured the experience on TikTok and shared it with her almost 11,000 followers.

At first, Johnson wasn't so sure she wanted her daughter to pursue the baby modeling path. "I just happened to come across some pages on TikTok where other moms had put their baby in modeling and were showing how much they make from it," she says. "My daughter was three months old. I was so hesitant about it because, at that time, I wasn't posting my daughter on social media, and I didn't know if I felt comfortable."

But Johnson and her husband decided to try it out anyway. And around three weeks after Ronnie submitted her photos, Rayne had been signed to an agency. Less than a month after that, she booked her first baby modeling gig.

Baby models are used for, well, any company that sells products for babies and their parents, including clothing, toys, bath products, and more. But how does someone actually get their child involved — and is it all really worth it?

Brandis Ohlsson is a consultant and director of scouting and development for the kids division at State Model Management.

For a child to book gigs, they'll likely need to be signed with an agency — doing it on your own probably isn't the best idea, says Brandis Ohlsson, a children's model consultant. That's mainly due to safety and understanding usage terms, or the length of time a company is allowed to use the content and images. "Agencies really are there to be a safety net for families," she says. They make their money by taking a percentage of the money earned, and usually it's around 20 percent.

Ohlsson offers a free list of reputable agencies, but if you're just using Google, she recommends looking for agencies in the closest big city to you, and it should be within driving distance. "Unfortunately if you live in like, South Dakota, you're kind of shit out of luck," she says. "It depends on where you live, the reason for that being, that's where people are shooting."

Also, be wary of any agency or person who asks for money up front or demands you submit professional photos of your child. "Most people can probably just go through their phone and they would be able to find the kind of photos that would work to market a baby, so I wouldn't go out and get expensive photos or do any of that kind of stuff either," Ohlsson says.

Johnson lives in Florida, so she submitted some photos of her daughter to agencies in Miami, which is a two-hour drive from her home. They went with Sprout Kids Agency. "I'm a stay-at-home mom, so the one that seemed best for our lifestyle was the one that I signed her to," she says. Taylor Morton lives in Los Angeles and submitted her son Jireh's photos to Zuri Agency on a Friday when he was around two and a half months old — by Monday, they wanted to sign him.

But booking jobs through an agency isn't always how people get started. For Nicole Spencer, casting directors from Zara initially reached out directly asking if she and her husband would be interested in having their son, Elliot, model for the apparel brand. She casts models as part of her job, so she was familiar with this side of the business.

Elliot was almost a year old at the time of his first Zara gig, and since then he's done two more shoots with the brand. Spencer still has not signed him to an agency, though. "We're just so focused on certain things in our life right now that I don't really have time to actively get him into modeling and pursue that," she says. She notes that she's open to having him shoot for Zara or another brand again.

The main factors that go into the rate for a baby model are session time, usage terms, and the geographical location. "The rates in the Midwest are much lower than they are in, say, New York," Ohlsson says. "The average hourly rate [for babies] in New York right now is anywhere between $125 to $150 an hour, with a two-hour minimum." The total fee may increase depending on usage and whether the content is for a commercial.

The rate also depends on the brand, and sometimes completely unpredictable factors come into play. Johnson's daughter's first shoot with Carter's paid $1,200. But Illinois mom Liz Dineen encountered a wild card. Her son Adrian's first paying gig was with VTech, a toy brand; he earned $250. "He actually didn't even model because, for babies, they book more babies than they think [they need] because some have meltdowns and they have to go to their backup," Dineen says. "He was booked as a backup and he didn't even model, but he still got paid that day." Dineen and Adrian were at the shoot for an hour or two, and it was a 30-minute drive from her home. Since then, he's been in around five more shoots for VTech and has also worked with other brands. Adrian has made almost $3,000 so far.

"Nobody's putting their kid through college with child modeling," says Ohlsson, adding that making anywhere from $4,000 to $10,000 as a baby model is normal.

There's been some recent scrutiny surrounding the topic of children in entertainment thanks to the release of documentaries like "Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV" and Demi Lovato's "Child Star." But modeling, especially for infants, is a less intense arm of the entertainment beast — babies sleep often and usually eat and nap on a specific schedule, so their time on set is often not as long as say, an older kid shooting a project.

Currently, 33 U.S. states regulate child entertainment. The laws vary by state — for example, 27 of those states require the child to have a work permit. In Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, New York, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and New Mexico, 15 percent of the child's earnings must be put into a trust account that they'll be able to access once they turn 18.

"For the babies, I've never really experienced any downsides," Ohlsson says. "For the most part, I'm talking to happy kids who like doing what they're doing." The parents, on the other hand, may get caught up in it. "If you go into it with the mindset that you're going to make money off your kid, that's where issues fall into place," Morton says.

"The best parents are the ones who go into it expecting nothing and appreciating what they get," Ohlsson says. "What makes kid advertising beautiful is that they're kids. There's this innocence and that beauty of them being kids — that's really important. However, there is a fine line because it's a multi-billion dollar business, so it has to also be treated that way."

At the end of the day, Ohlsson says it's not as salacious as people usually think it is. "I don't think there's a lot of people out there trying to steal their kids' money or anything. I think most people go into it [because] they just want to do something nice for their kids," she says. "It's a really cool thing to do if you're able to do it. If you're not able to do it, your kid's not missing out either."

As long as you're not putting too much pressure on them (or yourself), your child is having fun and they seem okay with it, getting your baby into the modeling game isn't a bad thing. "Obviously, if he tells me he doesn't want to do it, that's fine," Morton says. "But it's nice to know he'll have money in his name."

Elizabeth Gulino is a freelance journalist who specializes in topics relating to wellness, sex, relationships, work, money, lifestyle, and more. She spent four and a half years at Refinery29 as a senior writer and has worked for House Beautiful, Complex, and The Hollywood Reporter.