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With the rise of MomTok and mom-influencer chic, the cultural conversation around parenting has seemingly never been louder. Still, the voices of disabled parents—who number in the millions across the United States—far too frequently go unheard.
Jessica Slice’s new book Unfit Parent: A Disabled Mother Challenges an Inaccessible World 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, rather than assuming that all parents are similarly abled. Below, Vogue speaks to Slice about building a book tour around Unfit Parent that felt manageable for herself and her family, figuring out what (and how) to share about having young children online, how non-disabled parents can help their disabled friends and their families thrive, and more.
Vogue: What has surprised you most about your parenting journey?
Jessica Slice: This has nothing to do with disability, but I remember being in my 20s and having a friend who was a nanny for a family, and she watched their kids 15 hours a week. We were talking, and we were like, “Oh my gosh, do they never want to see their kids? Like, when do they even see their kids?” I think I’ve been surprised by the intensity of caring for two children and the amount of help you need if you’re going to be able to work.
How are you creating a book-promo experience that suits your needs? What does that look like for you?
Oh, I love this question. A lot of people who release books do their best to travel around and do book events and host events with bookstores and kind of be on the road, all while trying to do in-person interviews with media. When I met with my team at the beginning of all this, I described my capacity, which is: I really need to do almost everything virtually, because if I were to, for example, travel to New York to do in-person interviews and events, it would take me a month or so to recover afterwards. I had to make the decision with my team that that’s just not a sacrifice I can make, because I need to continue to be present for my family, and I can’t give up months of my life in recovery from from a trip like that.
So, much of what I’m doing is virtual, or writing essays and participating in Substacks and connecting with people. It feels like I’ve had to be really creative to still get this book out there without being able to do a lot of what other writers do. And then, of course, there’s the issue of access. On the day the book came out, I went to some local bookstores to sign the copies they had, and the first stop I went to, they had my book but they also had a stair at the entrance. I couldn’t go inside, and I signed my book on the street corner. So I do think accessibility matters in publishing as well.
I really appreciated the line you drew in Unfit Parent about not sharing certain experiences that belong to your daughter alone. How did you decide what to include and what to keep private?
I keep a lot about my kids private. I try to be really careful about sharing something that, down the road, either child wouldn’t want out there. I also try not to use anything hard in their lives as bait to paint some story that draws people in. There’s this whole world of moms who talk about their kids’ struggles as a way to interest people, and I don’t feel comfortable doing that for my kids, so I try to really focus on my experience parenting and not their experience as people. I’ve asked my eight-year-old, “What are you comfortable with me sharing?” And she says, “Tell everyone everything,” but I don’t think I can totally trust her consent. I think I need to wait until she can really conceptualize what she’s agreeing to.
I do include my kids in my photos, which some people choose not to do. I thought hard about that, and I decided that disabled people are so rarely shown parenting that I just wanted images out there of a disabled person in bed with kids, in her wheelchair with kids, that kind of thing. I decided the benefit of having these images as part of the conversation as a small contrast to the complete dearth of disabled conversation was worth it, but I’m also very careful. I would never include a photo of my kids crying. That would feel embarrassing to them. I do ask my eldest child’s permission to share photos, and she has never once said no.
You write beautifully in Unfit Parent about some of your favorite authors on disability, from Alice Wong to Meghan O Rourke. Is there a book you’d recommend to someone just beginning to grapple with disability or illness in their own life?
You know, the book I would like to write would spend more time talking about my own transition from well to disabled, because I had to condense it for Unfit Parent. But I think there’s a lot to say there. The book that meant the most to me when I was coming to terms with my disability was a philosophy book called The Minority Body: A Theory of Disability by Elizabeth Barnes. I also think Easy Beauty by Chloé Cooper Jones would be a great read. There’s this trope of the “how I overcame my illness” book, which was not as helpful to me; I think the reason The Minority Body was so useful is because it helped me recognize that I was part of a culture, and that felt so life-changing. Reading poetry was also crucial for me; I don’t know if that’s widely appealing, but I was reading a lot of Russian Revolution poets.
What do you wish more parents understood about disability?
One thing that I would love is to have other parents join me in advocating for more accessible spaces. I spend so much of my time with my kids working to be able to enter spaces together, like schools or stores or museums, and trying to find out ahead of time if there’s a ramp, or checking Google Maps for the little wheelchair sign and then finding out it’s not actually there. If other parents or friends were to have that on their radar too, and sometimes be the ones asking for things or checking them out or giving me details, it would make me feel like we’re in it together. I do have friends that do this, and it just makes such a big difference.
The distinction between disabled and not is pretty fuzzy, and most people, if they don’t, you know, die in an awful accident, will end up disabled in their lifetime. I think there’s a false binary and a false distance between people who are disabled and people who are not, so that support is an act of solidarity—but it’s also just an act of reality.
