She was the editor and proprietor of the magazines Baby, Womanhood and Playtime, and published articles and books on health, child care, and dress reform.

[17] A review in the journal Hebraica praised the book as "a model of beauty so far as execution and arrangement go," but voiced doubts that "the ordinary student will be able to do satisfactory work with this grammar," since "the principles are stated in a confusing and disconnected manner.

At the recommendation of William Henry Corfield, Ballin was invited to deliver a lecture on the subject at the International Health Exhibition, which was presented before a crowded audience on 14 July 1884.

[9] That December, she brought out the first volume of the monthly illustrated journal Baby: The Mothers' Magazine,[19] which took a scientific approach to child rearing.

[22] The regular and special contributors to Baby were often described as experts in their fields, and Ballin herself emphasized her position as "Lecturer to the National Health Society".

[26][27] Besides her work in the above areas, from 1883 until the death of Richard Proctor in 1888, Ballin contributed a series of articles on the evolution of languages to his paper Knowledge.

It was described as a "characteristic sanctum, full of papers, books, writing materials, and a thousand and one odds and ends, complimentary letters, editors’ epistles, MSS., and all the omnium gatherum which collect round a busy literary man or woman.

[30] Ballin married Alfred Thompson, a solicitor of London, on 21 September 1891,[31] and bore a daughter named Annie Isabella the following year.

[36] She bequeathed the management of her periodicals to her brother; Playtime and Womanhood both ceased publication after a year, but Baby continued to be published monthly until 1915.

[37][38] Ballin favoured wool, not cotton or linen, and insisted that clothes for babies should cover every part of the body while leaving the arms free.

[40] In The Science of Dress in Theory and Practice (1885) Ada Ballin wrote that "women—especially women in Society—dread, and have reason to dread, ridicule, and they would endure tortures rather than appear unfashionable.

[42] Baby was also criticised by the medical profession because of its endorsements, as extensive advertisements and the discussions of Ballin and her readers promoted specific products.