28-y-o mother with five children highlights ugly truth of teenage pregnancy

Many girls who fall victim to this never-ending cycle bear lifelong scars that constantly remind them of a choice that haunts them forever.

Sabrina Russell is one of those women, a high school dropout at the age of 14 and mother of two children before she could celebrate her 17th birthday.

The Bartons resident is now 28 years old with five children. Her inability to take care of the kids is self-evident in the one-room shack they called home in northern Old Harbour made of board and zinc. The roof leaks whenever it rains, while the flooring is part dirt and part concrete.

Russell has no special skill either, her unstable circumstance making it almost impossible for her to focus on any self-development strategies to improve the chances of a better life than what she has been facing ever since.

With help few and far between, she feels trapped by her circumstances, though she would have sought assistance through other channels.

“Most of mi life it’s like this. From mi know mi self, mi can hardly find things to give them,” she told Old Harbour News during a heart-wrenching interview. “Right now mi daughter no have no school bag fi go school and a two weeks now she no go school.”

The day before we spoke – a Sunday – Russell said she could only give the children porridge for dinner, made possible by  a friend who gave her $200. And she had no clue how she was going to feed them later the following day.

It is easy for some persons who were not raised in poor social conditions to criticize girls like Russell. But in truth she had no control over the environment she was born into. After all, her mother, who is 45 years old today, is among the statistics of teenage mothers in the 1990s with little or no support from the fathers of her six children. Russell was one of the siblings who growing up received no support from her father.

“Mi know him, but him never gi mi nuttn yet,” she said of her dad, now deceased.

To ease the burden of raising so many children, Russell was sent to live with her grandmother in the tough innercity community of Marverley in Kingston.

But hope of a better life was quickly dashed as Russell became pregnant at 14 by a man many years older than her. She was an easy prey for grown men who took advantage of her situation that unfortunately and sadly isn’t unique on the island. When her grandmother wasn’t able to provide for her, she naively sought aid and comfort in an adult male who disappeared out of her life shortly after giving birth to a son.

“How mi meet mi first child father… my grandmother never use to give me lunch money or breaks money… and eventually mi get pregnant fi him.

“So him wi gi mi money now and then fi mi go school but mi grandmother never know bout it. When the baby was one, two years old him use to bring stuff come give me but after that him just stop and wi no si him again,” she said.

Her grandmother would eventually return her to Bodles in Old Harbour to live with her mother. However, her stay in Old Harbour was short-lived, as she returned to Marverley. A couple decided to help her, but Russell was on the move yet again after the husband made sexual advances at her. She sought refuge elsewhere but not too long afterwards discovered she was pregnant, by another older man whom she thought had her interest at heart. Her inexperience and naivety ruthlessly exposed. She was placed on contraceptives after her first child, but the lack of adult supervision and counselling support meant Russell was not taking ‘the pill’ as instructed.

“Mi did a tek dem yes, but not every day,” she said regarding how she self-administered the family planning medication. A second return to Old Harbour, this time with a two-year-old boy and a baby girl just a few weeks old also meant things had gotten harder than before. It is a massive burden of responsibility for any adult to carry, let alone a 16-year-old mother with no paternal or family support.

When the family relocated to Seven Miles in Bartons, Russell tried selling whatever she could forage from off the land. But three more mouths were added to her brood, which she claimed was because the “injection” – a contraceptive method that was having adverse effects on her. She had developed fibroids among other health complications after her third child, who is now seven years old and lives mostly with her dad.

Even so Russell is still struggling to keep the children in school.

“A three weeks now mi no have no grocery a mi yaad,” she said. “Things really sticky wid mi.”

Despite all she’s going through, Russell is trying to make the best out of a small backyard chicken farm with help from a Good Samaritan. However, she finds herself in a conundrum of sending the children to school and keeping the poultry business afloat.

Using her 11-year-old daughter to highlight her predicament, Russell said: “She hardly can go school because if dem don’t give her lunch mi affi find it and mi don’t have it because mi affi buy chicken and the feed expensive and mi can’t mek the chicken dem dead fi hungry. So it rough.”

The chickens – 30 in total – are four weeks old she disclosed. It’s a venture she cannot afford to let fail either, as she intends to expand the coop and increase production output.

Once this is achieved she plans to return to the trade of buying and selling goods in the market “on Fridays and Saturdays”.

Such ambitions will take some time to be realized, though, and hence will be grateful for any help to improve her situation.

Her latest cry for help is possibly one final throw of the dice, as past experiences left a bitter taste in her mouth instead of any sense of optimism.

“True mi cant tek di embarrassment mi no bada go back to them,” she said. A few days ago Russell shared a video of her situation while appealing for help.

In a 2017 United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) country brief on teenage pregnancies in Jamaica, it highlighted the ripple effects of mothers like Russell, who became a victim of their circumstance.

Noting that 18 percent of all births in Jamaica occur in teenagers, the report stated: “One major challenge is the fact that teen-mothers often drop out of the school system, and have little support from the ‘baby-fathers’ in bringing up their children. This has a double negative effect – on the young mother, who has her opportunities for development truncated; and on the child, who will not receive the benefits that a better-equipped mother could provide in terms of parenting.”

Without doubt Sabrina Russell story is living proof of the UNFPA findings.

Editor’s Note: If you want to help Sabrina Russell call 876 209 1694.