Virtual: Unfit Parent by Jessica Slice in conversation with Jessie Owen

We are excited to host Jessica Slice for a virtual event celebrating the release of Unfit Parent: A Disabled Mother Challenges an Inaccessible World. For this event, Jessica will be joined in conversation by Jessie Owen.

This event will be hosted on Zoom Webinar. Register to be emailed the link for the event.

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

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

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

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.

Jessica Slice is a disabled mom and author of Unfit Parent: A Disabled Mother Challenges an Inaccessible World. She is also the co-author of Dateable: Swiping Right, Hooking Up, and Settling Down while Chronically Ill and Disabled and This Is How We Play, as well as the forthcoming This Is How We Talk and We Belong. She has been published in Modern Love, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Alice Wong’s bestselling Disability Visibility, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, and more. She lives in Toronto with her family.

Jessie Owen is a disability advocate, content creator, and speaker with a focus on accessibility, equity, and innovation in spinal cord injury research. As a quadriplegic mother of twins, she shares candid insights on life, parenting, and navigating systemic barriers with humor and authenticity. She serves as cochair of the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) commission in Edmonds, WA, and advises on policy and community initiatives to create more inclusive spaces. She is also a board member for the National Center for Disability and Pregnancy Research and a consultant for Onward, a company advancing spinal cord injury technology. Her work has been featured in conferences, media, and advocacy spaces, where she brings sharp wit and lived experience to conversations about disability, healthcare, and social change.

Accessibility: This event will be hosted on Zoom Webinar. Cart Captioning and ASL services will be provided. For questions or addition access needs, please email events@womenandchildrenfirst.com.