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"A must-read for anyone committed to building a just and accessible world.”
- Aubrey Gordon
"Details her own story beautifully and intersperses with oft-ignored research."
- The Cut
“A beautiful, transformative book."
- Rachel Aviv
"An impeccably researched, reported, and referenced love letter and an artfully drawn map Jessica Slice bends our beliefs about bodies."
- Angela Garbes
"An essential addition to the motherhood canon."
-Lit Hub
"Glorious, revelatory...joy that the entire world can learn from."
- Ed Yong
Filled with insight that manages to be at once beautiful and razor-sharp. This book is fucking elucidating. I cannot recommend highly enough
- Ann Helen Petersen
"Interweaves her personal experience with a deeper, researched examination of what it means to be a disabled parent in a culture that prizes individualism and fears disability. ..also offers an illuminating perspective that applies to all parents."
- The Washington Post
“Rigorously researched and open-hearted prose . . a fierce, compassionate, and unremittingly lucid book."
- Andrew Leland
Cuts boldly and beautifully through that silence, inviting readers to imagine what our world might look like if we met every family where they are."
- Vogue
Hi! I am Jessica Slice. I am an author, essayist, and speaker.
I write, think, and talk about disability.
Unfit Parent
A disabled mother challenges an inaccessible world
Navigating the joys, stigma, and discrimination of disabled parenting—and how the solutions offered by disability culture can transform the way we all raise our kids
Jessica Slice’s disability is exactly what her child needed as a newborn. After becoming disabled a handful of years prior, Jessica had done the hard work of disentangling her worth from productivity and learning how to prepare for an unpredictable and fragile world. Despite evidence to the contrary, nondisabled people and systems often worry that disabled people cannot keep kids safe and cared for, labeling disabled parents “unfit,” but disabled parents and culture provide valuable lessons for rejecting societal rules that encourage perfectionism and lead to isolation.
Unfit Parent is available in print, large print, audio, and e-book!
Praise for Unfit Parent
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"This book will change how you think about parenting forever, no matter how able-bodied you may be.
As a disabled parent, Jessica Slice didn't want my pity or admiration. She wanted me to learn about the many obstacles people with disabilities face when they consider parenting, and how those obstacles make parenting harder for pretty much everyone.
This book made me more determined than ever to help dismantle the unrealistic expectations that make raising kids difficult. I give this my highest recommendation." ~Blair
"This is an important book. It will change how you think about disability, able-bodiedness, and parenting. It is at once insightful, broad, succinct, intellectual, personal, and heartbreaking." ~Alisha
"As a disabled parent, I annotated about half this book! It's both validating and infuriating in its look at how ableism harms disabled parents and the disability community as a whole. I highly recommend this book to disabled and non-disabled readers alike." ~Mary
"I adored this book.
The writing is beautiful, the content is essential, and the author moves from personal narrative to researched reporting to thoughtful analysis without skipping a step.
I had an advance reader's copy but went ahead and placed my preorder so I'd have a copy I can lend too." ~Alison
"'One way to to describe ableism is that it's the lie that we can labor ourselves out of suffering.'
I read this after listening to an excellent interview with the author on the Burnt Toast podcast. The author succinctly connects how capitalism fuels ableism in general and attitudes toward parenting and family specifically. She also provides examples of how individual creativity and mutual aid can help to fill in the gaps in our healthcare system/childcare "system"/etc. -- while still emphasizing the need for MASSIVE structural change... I consider myself firmly anti-ablism, and there were a few stories that *really* surprised me. Definite recommend." ~Jenna