A woman from Romania became the world's youngest grandmother at the age of 23, when her 11-year-old daughter gave birth to a son, three years ago
Rifca Stanescu, from the town of Investi, was twelve years old when she gave birth to her daughter, Maria.
ADVERTISEMENT
The birth made Rifca a grandmother at age 23, and her mother a great-grandmother at age 40.
The family is part of the Romanian traveller community, where it’s common for couples to marry and have children at a young age.
Indeed, her 2-year-old grandson Ion, is already engaged to an eight-year-old local girl.
Apparently, Rifca had also been promised to a boy when she was two years old, but eloped with her now-husband at age 11.
“I wanted to marry him … and of course after we had spent the night together then there was no way anyone could separate us,” Essential baby quoted her as telling the Sun.
A year later, she fell pregnant with Maria, giving birth to another child a few years later.
Rifca also revealed that she begged Maria to stay in school and finish her education, but she, too, married young, and got pregnant within six months.
“I am happy to be a grandmother but I wished something else for Maria - and something else for me,” she said.
“I did not try to stop my daughter getting married because this is the tradition, it’s what happens,” she added.