FEEDING her children and sending them to school are parental responsibilities Debbie Ann Nelson is unable to fulfil. For the 30-year-old unemployed single mother from Golden Spring, St Andrew, life is a perpetual struggle.

But Nelson readily admits that all that is happening now is her fault. mistakes she cannot correct. She has made bad decisions in choosing partners and today she is suffering the consequences along with her six children, three daughters – a seven-year-old and a pair of seven-month-old twins, and three sons ages five, 10 and 14.

“I don’t regret having my children but I regret having them for those fathers,” she tells the Observer. “I also regret not serving God and making so many foolish mistakes, and now I am unable to correct them.”

Nelson tells the all too familiar story of delinquent fathers who have shunned their paternal responsibilities, leaving her to be the sole provider for their offspring, and of family members who have turned a blind eye to her situation.

“I don’t have anyone to support me. The fathers are not supporting them and I don’t have any job,” she says, adding that the father of the twin girls is a Caymanian who no longer lives in Jamaica and refuses to provide child support. She says family members have also refused to associate themselves with her because of the choices she has made in life.

“Most of the time when I go on the road, I will see somebody and they might offer me something for the children, but other than that the children can’t go to school [Constant Spring Primary] which is very bad.”

Today she is forced to seek assistance to provide food and proper shelter for

her children.

“Things are really hard with me, I don’t even have food to feed them,” a desperate Nelson said, as the twin babies cried uncontrollably in her arms. “And because of the children, I am unable to get a job. But if I could get one, like cleaning or washing, there is a lady I could leave them with during the day.”

She adds that the twin girls have ear and stomach infections and are in need of medical attention.

Her living conditions in Golden Spring, she says, are “terrible”, pointing out that the one-room shack they call home has no windows, flooring or doors.

“I have no furniture or stove either. I have to cook on wood fire or coal. The Member of Parliament [Andrew Gallimore] gave me some material to put up a better one-room but I need some assistance to put it together. I’d love to build up something better for me and my children,” Nelson tells the Observer. She says she is also registered with the PATH programme but nothing has been forthcoming since she signed up three months ago.