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Unfit Parent

A Disabled Mother Challenges an Inaccessible World

Author Jessica Slice
Narrator Finlay Stevenson
Audiobook Download
Beacon Press | Beacon Press Audio
On sale Apr 15, 2025 | 8 Hours and 25 Minutes | 9780807018224
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“A glorious, revelatory book.”—Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author of An Immense World

“A beautiful, transformative book about being a parent in a world that rejects frailty and weakness.”—Rachel Aviv, staff writer at the New Yorker

A paradigm shifting look at the landscape of disabled parenting—the joys, stigma, and discrimination—and how disability culture holds the key to transforming 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 from a shift in her autonomic nervous system, 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.

Blending her experience of becoming disabled in adulthood and later becoming a parent with interviews, social research, and disability studies, Slice describes what the landscape is like for disabled parents. From expensive or non-existent adaptive equipment to inaccessible healthcare and schools to the terror of parenting while disabled in public and threat of child protective services, Slice uncovers how disabled parents, out of necessity, must reject the rules and unrealistic expectations that all parents face. She writes about how disabled parents are often more prepared than nondisabled parents to navigate the uncertainty of losing control over bodily autonomy. In doing so, she highlights the joy, creativity, and radical acceptance that comes with being a disabled parent.

While disabled parents have been omitted from mainstream parenting conversations, Slice argues that disabled bodies and minds give us the hopeful perspectives and solutions we need for transforming a societal system that has left parents exhausted, stuck, and alone.
“A must for collections. This work offers much insight and interweaves the author’s personal experiences with interviews with numerous parents with a variety of disabilities about their experiences.”
—Library Journal, Starred Review

“A love letter to disabled parenting—an impeccably researched, reported, and referenced love letter—as well as an artfully drawn map of an exquisite, convivial society that can only be achieved with the creativity, skill, and joy of disabled people.”
—Angela Garbes, author of Essential Labor and Like a Mother

“This is such a glorious, revelatory book. Jessica Slice cuts through all the judgment and stereotypes to reveal the truth: disabled people are, in many ways, uniquely suited to and skilled at parenthood and are sources of wisdom, ingenuity, courage, and joy that the entire world can learn from.”
—Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author of An Immense World

“A beautiful, transformative book about being a parent in a world that rejects frailty and weakness.”
—Rachel Aviv, author of Strangers to Ourselves

“An absorbing portrayal of what it’s really like to be a disabled parent, including the shocking and understudied discrimination they face . . . A fierce, compassionate, and unremittingly lucid book that I’ll be returning to again and again.”
—Andrew Leland, Pulitzer Prize–finalist author of The Country of the Blind

“This vulnerable, insightful, and thoughtful book is a must-read for any parent seeking a map for how to care for their children—while also caring for their own needs—with creativity, community, and joy.”
—Rachel Somerstein, author of Invisible Labor

“Powerful, necessary, and filled with raw honesty . . . For anyone who believes in a more compassionate and equitable world.”
—Alyssa Blask Campbell, author of Tiny Humans, Big Emotions

“Jessica Slice’s story of disabled parenting will feel familiar to anyone who has been told their body is ‘not enough’ or ‘too much.’ Slice’s work deftly tells a deeply moving story, while grounding readers in the many ways ableism shows up in parenthood. Unfit Parent is a must-read for anyone committed to building a just and accessible world for parents and kids alike.”
—Aubrey Gordon, New York Times best-selling author and cohost of Maintenance Phase
Jessica Slice is a disabled mother, author, and essayist whose work has appeared in The New York Times’s Modern Love column, in Alice Wong’s bestselling Disability Visibility, The Washington Post, Glamour, and Cosmopolitan, among others. She is co-author, with Caroline Cupp, of Dateable: Swiping Right, Hooking Up, and Settling Down While Chronically Ill and Disabled and This is How We Play: A Celebration of Disability and Adaptation. Follow her online at jessicaslice.com.
Jessica Slice View titles by Jessica Slice
Introduction

CHAPTER 1
Disability & Me (& You)

CHAPTER 2
We, Parents

CHAPTER 3
Deciding to Parent

CHAPTER 4
The First Week

CHAPTER 5
Parenting at Home

CHAPTER 6
In the World

CHAPTER 7
Medical Care

CHAPTER 8
Child Protective Services

CHAPTER 9
Ableism

EPILOGUE
March 2024

Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

About

“A glorious, revelatory book.”—Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author of An Immense World

“A beautiful, transformative book about being a parent in a world that rejects frailty and weakness.”—Rachel Aviv, staff writer at the New Yorker

A paradigm shifting look at the landscape of disabled parenting—the joys, stigma, and discrimination—and how disability culture holds the key to transforming 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 from a shift in her autonomic nervous system, 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.

Blending her experience of becoming disabled in adulthood and later becoming a parent with interviews, social research, and disability studies, Slice describes what the landscape is like for disabled parents. From expensive or non-existent adaptive equipment to inaccessible healthcare and schools to the terror of parenting while disabled in public and threat of child protective services, Slice uncovers how disabled parents, out of necessity, must reject the rules and unrealistic expectations that all parents face. She writes about how disabled parents are often more prepared than nondisabled parents to navigate the uncertainty of losing control over bodily autonomy. In doing so, she highlights the joy, creativity, and radical acceptance that comes with being a disabled parent.

While disabled parents have been omitted from mainstream parenting conversations, Slice argues that disabled bodies and minds give us the hopeful perspectives and solutions we need for transforming a societal system that has left parents exhausted, stuck, and alone.

Reviews

“A must for collections. This work offers much insight and interweaves the author’s personal experiences with interviews with numerous parents with a variety of disabilities about their experiences.”
—Library Journal, Starred Review

“A love letter to disabled parenting—an impeccably researched, reported, and referenced love letter—as well as an artfully drawn map of an exquisite, convivial society that can only be achieved with the creativity, skill, and joy of disabled people.”
—Angela Garbes, author of Essential Labor and Like a Mother

“This is such a glorious, revelatory book. Jessica Slice cuts through all the judgment and stereotypes to reveal the truth: disabled people are, in many ways, uniquely suited to and skilled at parenthood and are sources of wisdom, ingenuity, courage, and joy that the entire world can learn from.”
—Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author of An Immense World

“A beautiful, transformative book about being a parent in a world that rejects frailty and weakness.”
—Rachel Aviv, author of Strangers to Ourselves

“An absorbing portrayal of what it’s really like to be a disabled parent, including the shocking and understudied discrimination they face . . . A fierce, compassionate, and unremittingly lucid book that I’ll be returning to again and again.”
—Andrew Leland, Pulitzer Prize–finalist author of The Country of the Blind

“This vulnerable, insightful, and thoughtful book is a must-read for any parent seeking a map for how to care for their children—while also caring for their own needs—with creativity, community, and joy.”
—Rachel Somerstein, author of Invisible Labor

“Powerful, necessary, and filled with raw honesty . . . For anyone who believes in a more compassionate and equitable world.”
—Alyssa Blask Campbell, author of Tiny Humans, Big Emotions

“Jessica Slice’s story of disabled parenting will feel familiar to anyone who has been told their body is ‘not enough’ or ‘too much.’ Slice’s work deftly tells a deeply moving story, while grounding readers in the many ways ableism shows up in parenthood. Unfit Parent is a must-read for anyone committed to building a just and accessible world for parents and kids alike.”
—Aubrey Gordon, New York Times best-selling author and cohost of Maintenance Phase

Author

Jessica Slice is a disabled mother, author, and essayist whose work has appeared in The New York Times’s Modern Love column, in Alice Wong’s bestselling Disability Visibility, The Washington Post, Glamour, and Cosmopolitan, among others. She is co-author, with Caroline Cupp, of Dateable: Swiping Right, Hooking Up, and Settling Down While Chronically Ill and Disabled and This is How We Play: A Celebration of Disability and Adaptation. Follow her online at jessicaslice.com.
Jessica Slice View titles by Jessica Slice

Table of Contents

Introduction

CHAPTER 1
Disability & Me (& You)

CHAPTER 2
We, Parents

CHAPTER 3
Deciding to Parent

CHAPTER 4
The First Week

CHAPTER 5
Parenting at Home

CHAPTER 6
In the World

CHAPTER 7
Medical Care

CHAPTER 8
Child Protective Services

CHAPTER 9
Ableism

EPILOGUE
March 2024

Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

Additional formats

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