If my child were in charge, we would spend every hour of every day in matching floral

nightgowns playing the late eighties version of Mario 3.

I play; K narrates. She tells me which treasure chest to open and stops talking when it’s time to
fight Bowser so that I can concentrate. Our goal is to reach the part in level 5 when Mario jumps
around in a sock. We are in an impenetrable bubble on our fluffy white sofa with that dated,
pixelated game on the TV.

Another of “our” activities, which also must be done in our long twin nightgowns, is to shop for
home furnishings online. K could, without exaggeration, look at rugs and light fixtures for an
entire afternoon. I pick a store, and we scroll and scroll. Which is silliest? Which do we want to
buy? Recently, I ordered a Benjamin Moore paint swatch fan, and we spent the evenings looking
through the colors and laughing about the names—“kitten whiskers”?!

Sometimes, I feel insecure about which activities I do with her. My husband, David, is the one
who is teaching her how to ride a bike. David drives her to school. David flies a kite and swims in
the lake. If I want to spend more than a few minutes with K, I need to be reclined and
stationary.

When I was considering the first paragraph of this book, the image that would introduce the
reader to my relationship with my child, I considered the morning I sat with her in a lobby of a
government building when she was a few weeks old. A security guard approached us and said
that she had never seen a caregiver and baby so connected. That our bond brought tears to her
eyes.

I thought about starting the book with the time our neighborhood caught on fire in California:
how David drove our van down the hill away from the wall of flames with K on my lap. How
tightly I held her and refused to let go until we were far away from danger. How we saved her
life. Or maybe I could start the book by describing K’s first asthma attack at eighteen months
old. I was in bed and heard her first cry of the day and, without hesitation, told David that
something was wrong and we needed a doctor. David looked at me, confused, but I was right. I
know my baby.

We are connected.

I’d tell those harrowing stories to prove that I am a real parent. A part of me wants to spend this
whole book defending why I am just as worthy as a nondisabled parent. I want to convince you,
the reader (and myself), that K’s life isn’t worse with me as her mom.

But I know, when I am calm and honest—that approach won’t get us anywhere; you’ll smell the
defensiveness on me. My rule of writing, the reminder I write each morning before I start and
repeat to myself when I edit, is this:
Tell the truth.

That’s what I will do in this book. I will tell the truth about what it means to be a disabled
parent. What our days are like, and how it feels to go out in the world when the world is not
designed for you. About the barriers of our bodies and minds, of those imposed on our bodies
and minds, and the pernicious barriers of our own internalized ableism. The absolute terror of
parenting publicly while knowing that the vast majority of people who have their children
removed by social welfare systems are disabled. How expensive and demoralizing it is when
you’re disabled and trying to find baby equipment that works. I’ll tell the truth about medical
care, selective abortions, and labor. About breastfeeding and imposter syndrome and
community. I’ll tell the truth even when it will make people think I’m a worse parent than
someone who is not disabled. I’ll tell the truth even when it makes people mad.

I will also share the lessons that my disabled body has taught me and how those lessons have
helped me as a parent. I’ll share the deep wisdom that disability culture offers and how it could
alter parenthood for everyone.

Being a disabled parent is hard, but in our isolated and productivity-driven society, being any
parent is hard. I believe—not because I’m trying to prove my worth, but because I have lived it
—that disabled parents have something powerful and transformative to offer. We have wrestled
with misbehaving bodies and minds. We have navigated a world that rejects frailty and
weakness.

Years before acquiring my disability and over a decade before becoming a parent myself, my
dear friend Kate had four kids in five years. I spent hours at her house hanging out and
observing what it took to care for children. She would try to update me on some aspect of her
life, and in the course of one sentence of one story, she’d be interrupted by three different kids:
a bottom that needed to be wiped, a request for a snack, a squabble over sharing. The needs
were constant and variable—second-to-second demands. Sometimes, we’d be on the phone,
and I’d overhear the complex tactical planning of finding a minute to step away to pee.

While I was not disabled at the time, I was considering having kids one day. It was our first
decade out of college. Going about my day, I would try to imagine what it would be like to have
kids. I’d consider my mornings—a run, breakfast, coffee, shower, work—and try to add in four
small children with constant needs. I’d peek around my shower curtain and imagine a four-year-
old digging through my toiletries, a two-year-old falling on the tile, and a newborn wailing with
a dirty diaper. How could children possibly fit into life? I’m a parent now and write about
parenting professionally, and I still don’t know that they can.

Parenting, for everyone, when seen through the lens of their life before parenting, is
unthinkable. Parenting two kids, through the lens of parenting one, is unimaginable. Every new
stage of parenting is impossible to comprehend before you’re there. And yet we do it. We keep
our kids safe; we love them in a way we never imagined; we delight in their lives.

Our capacities exceed our imagination—they grow from our creativity. Disabled parenting is the
same. If you look at my life through the lens of your body, it may seem unsustainable. But my
capacity—for joy, for innovation, for community—is enough. Disabled parents, out of necessity,
must reject the rules and standards that guide nondisabled parents.

And disabled people have learned important lessons living in an unreasonable world.

I have not written a comprehensive historical or cultural account of parenting in North America.
Other authors are doing that brilliantly.

What I offer is my view from my own disabled body and from my place in the wider disability
community. And, from here, I see how the lessons I’ve learned that help me survive in a world
that was not designed for me also help me as a parent. I’ve witnessed how our family divides
our labor differently and how much I value flexibility and reconsidering popular standards of
parenting success.

Unfit Parent blends my own story of disability and parenting with interviews, social
commentary, disability theory, and sociohistorical research. It cannot be a comprehensive
account of every type of disability, nor can it cover the full history of being a disabled parent in
the US and Canada.

There are a few topics that I will gloss over or pause briefly on that, in fact, could take up a
multivolume collection: the history of disabled sterilization, the financial reality of being
disabled in the US, and the child welfare system. Disabled parenting deserves its own genre of
books, and it’s my wish that this will help spur the publication of many more. What I hope is
that this book will start conversations and encourage other disabled parents to share their
experiences.

By the nature of its topic, it discusses medical abuse, family separation, institutionalization,
sexual violence, infertility, ableism, violence, racism, and loss. Take care of yourself while
reading.

Being a disabled parent isn’t easy—our needs and experiences are often overlooked, and, as I’ve
mentioned, we never forget that the social welfare system can swoop in at any time and remove
our children. Being disabled can feel lonely, and parenting while disabled can compound that
feeling.

The world was not designed for us. For example, my kid’s former school was not wheelchair
accessible, and, as a result, she spent her days in a building I had never been inside. I will
describe the real, practical, and emotional
experience of parenting in what philosophy professor Dr. Elizabeth Barnes calls “a minority
body.” Through interviews and research, I will help you glimpse what it’s like to be a parent with
a minority body and mind.

If I find myself trying to defend myself, I will go back and try again. Unfit Parent isn’t proof of my
value. It doesn’t need to be. The reality is this: this book is an offering. And I hope my fellow
disabled parents will feel seen reading these stories.

If you are disabled and parenting or thinking about parenting, I offer this book as solidarity. You
are doing something hard and real and, despite a total lack of representation, know that you are
not the only one. Every time you feel like a fake or like you aren’t a real parent, remember that
you bring something deeply true and wise to your children and your family.

You have survived in this world. That is huge. And you aren’t doing this alone. There is a
community of brilliant and creative disabled people cheering you on.

And, if you aren’t disabled, I hope to give you the information you need to reconsider what
disability means and what we owe one another. I hope you can start to understand why I
believe that my body isn’t the problem; it’s our inaccessible world. The harm done to us by an
individualistic and profit-driving culture is hurting nondisabled people, too.

If you are a parent—disabled or not—and you are exhausted and feel like you are drowning in
inhumane policies and culture, I hope this book offers hope. My first message is this: you aren’t
wrong; you are doing something impossible. But the good news is that marginalized people are
often the first to notice when something is broken, and, as such, are the first to establish
reparative solutions. Disabled people are the canaries in the coal mine. We have seen the
problem, and we have found answers.

Disability culture reframes the wider culture. It teaches creativity and acceptance. It rejects
rabid capitalism and embraces mutual aid. It encourages rest. Just imagine what it would be like
to be a parent in a society where parenthood didn’t mean perfectionism and loneliness.

As disability activist Alice Wong brilliantly says, disabled people are “oracles.” Our needy minds
and bodies slow us down, and, once humans stop moving so much, we can look around. We can
see. These disabled bodies and minds give us perspective. Disabled parents have been omitted
from mainstream parenting conversations, but it’s our wisdom and culture that could transform
the whole system.

This book isn’t evidence that we deserve to parent. It’s not a lament of how we suffer. It’s
centuries of disabled wisdom crafted into a gentle, transformative, magical map.

Excerpted from Unfit Parent: A Disabled Mother Challenges an Inaccessible World by Jessica
Slice, published by Beacon Press on April 15.