Unfit parent A disabled mother challenges an inaccessible world

Slice has a rewarding life as an author, speaker, and, most notably, a disabled parent. Her first book chronicles her struggles with a judging world. Her life is expansive, she writes, worth living and sharing with a child. And despite many difficulties, Slice's disability creates abilities: a deep wisdom to develop new perspectives, problem solve, and parent more creatively. Slice and her husband were ecstatic to foster newborn baby K, with Slice adeptly and lovingly creating accommodations allowing her to care for K at home. As a visibly disabled parent, she's acutely aware that the very act of leaving home brings harsh judgment. Noting that most people who have children removed are disabled, Slice describes parenting with a disability as fraught with terror of child protective services being called. She reports on the history of discrimination and marginalization of the disabled. Identifying ableism as a fear of fragility and death that adversely affects the lives of disabled people and their families, Slice offers this vital book to foster empathy, understanding, and societal support for disabled parents.

Slice (coauthor, Dateable: Swiping Right, Hooking Up, and Settling Down While Chronically Ill and Disabled) shares, with no holds barred, her experiences as a parent living with a disability. After a hike with her husband triggered a shift in her autonomic nervous system, Slice was diagnosed with a genetic condition that affects connective tissues, joints, blood vessel walls, and more. It also can cause neurological complications. The condition worsened, and Slice began to experience a rapid heart rate when she stood. Standing, eating, and other day-to-day activities send her body into fight and flight mode. A mother of two children, she uses her book to show that pregnancy and labor alone are infinitely more complicated for people who have a disability, and it is cost-prohibitive and near-impossible to find accessible baby equipment. Exorbitant childcare costs, unfriendly employment policies, and costly medical care are other issues in the United States that are exacerbated for people who have disabilities. VERDICT A must for collections. This work offers much insight and interweaves the author's personal experiences with interviews with numerous parents with a variety of disabilities about their experiences.