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

In Unfit Parent, Slice debunks the exclusionary myths that deem disabled people “unfit” to care for their children, instead showing how disabled parents and disability culture provide valuable lessons for rejecting societal rules that encourage perfectionism and lead to isolation.

Combining her personal experiences with interviews, research-backed evidence, and disability studies, Slice shares insight into what the landscape is like for disabled parents—one that is scattered with unpredictable obstacles and inaccessible barriers. In overcoming these challenges, she describes how disabled parents are oftentimes more prepared to adapt to the demanding nature of parenthood, including the uncertainty of losing control over bodily autonomy.

Uplifting and powerful, Unfit Parent illuminates how 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.

Jessica Slice's profile page

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.

“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. I am a nondisabled man with no children and I gained so much from this book.”
—Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author of An Immense World

“Unfit Parent is 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. Jessica Slice bends our beliefs about bodies and reorients us toward our need for one another, the messy beauty of our interconnectedness.”
—Angela Garbes, author of Essential Labor and Like a Mother

“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. It made me reflect on my own parenting and deeply held beliefs. A gift.”
—Rachel Somerstein, journalist and author of Invisible Labor: The Untold Story of the Cesarean Section

“An absorbing portrayal of what it’s really like to be a disabled parent, including the shocking and understudied discrimination they face. In rigorously researched and open-hearted prose, Slice illuminates the joys and pains of disabled parenting, arriving at the crucial revelation: the skillset of being disabled is far from disqualifying and is, in fact, uniquely well-tuned to the demands of parenting. Unfit Parent is 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

“A beautiful, transformative book about being a parent in a world that rejects frailty and weakness.”
—Rachel Aviv, staff writer at the New Yorker and author of Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us

“Jessica Slice’s Unfit Parent challenges the narrative of what it means to parent in a world that wasn’t designed for everyone. Powerful, necessary, and filled with raw honesty, the story of Jessica’s lived experience as a disabled parent offers an invaluable perspective that will resonate with anyone who cares about inclusivity and accessibility. This book is a must-read for anyone who believes in a more compassionate and equitable world.”
—Alyssa Blask Campbell, CEO of Seed & Sew and author of Tiny Humans, Big Emotions