(I deleted my old answer, because I misread your question, sorry)
There is way, but it is a little bit cumbersome. Since the long planned Maven fragments are not yet implemented, you could use the tiles-maven-plugin:
https://github.com/maoo/maven-tiles
The Tiles plugin allows you to "import" foreign poms into your model. So you would create a separate pom for your "common stuff":
<project>
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>common</groupId>
<artifactId>common-stuff</artifactId>
<packaging>pom</packaging>
<version>1.0</version>
<name>"Common Stuff"</name>
"Common stuff"
</project>
In your actual child POMs, you include the tiles plugin as extension (possibly in your true parent pom):
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>it.session.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>tiles-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>${maventiles.plugin.version}</version>
<extensions>true</extensions>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
Now you can import your common stuff using properties (I am not quite happy with using properties for this, but it works):
<properties>
<tile.1>common:common-stuff:1.0</tile.1>
</properties>
As a result, your effective POM contains elements from your child project itself as well as from the imported common-stuff artifact.
The plugin is somewhat proprietary, but for normal usecases, it works quit well.