Amanda Fields and Eva Langston chat with Jessica Slice, author of Unfit Parent, about designing and inventing systems of parenting based on the bodies and minds we live in. Unfit Parent examines the obstacles that disabled parents face, the societal beliefs that undergird those barriers, and the political and economic systems that hold it all in place. Jessica explores how disability culture and the strengths inherent in having a body like hers would, if included in parenting culture, make contemporary parenting more sustainable.

Jessica Slice is a disabled author, speaker, and essayist. Her book, Unfit Parent: A Disabled Mother Challenges an Inaccessible World (Beacon, 2025) has been shortlisted for the J. Anthony Lukas Prize. She is the co-author of Dateable: Swiping Right, Hooking Up, and Settling Down (Hachette, 2024) and This is How We Play (Dial, 2024), as well as the forthcoming This is How We Talk (Dial, 2025) and We Belong (Dial, 2026), which was co-authored with the late Judy Heumann. Jessica has been published in Modern Love, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, the Guardian, The Globe & Mail, LitHub, Alice Wong’s bestselling Disability Visibility, Slate, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, and more. She’s been featured in Vogue, The New Yorker, PBS, NPR, The Cut, the BBC, and more. She lives in Toronto with her family.

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