The world’s youngest grandmother…at 23 years old

If anyone called you “granddad” at the ripe old age of 23 chances are you’d be pretty offended, right? But a Romanian woman has been labelled the world’s youngest granny after she became a grandmother at 23. First things first – how is that even possible? Well, we’ll tell you…

The Daily Mail reports that Rifca Stanescu from Romania gave birth to her daughter Maria when she was only 12 years old. Shocking. But it gets better…

Maria then went on to give birth to her own son at the age of 11, despite pleas from her own mother to stay in school and get a good education.

Now 27 years old, Rifca told a reporter from The Sun paper: “I am happy to be a grandmother but I wished something else for Maria – and something else for me.”

Born in 1985, Rifca left home and eloped with a jewellery seller when she was 11 and he was 13. Her family were absolutely livid and tried to forcefully bring her back home numerous times, but Rifca continued to escape and run back to her man.

“I wanted to marry him, so I agreed, and of course after we had spent the night together then there was no way anyone could separate us. I had been promised to another boy’s family since I was two years old but I didn’t want that,” Rifca said.

Rifca comes from a gypsy culture where women are married incredibly young so that new husbands can be sure that their wife is a virgin. Virginity is seen as a commodity, and virgin wives generally collect a good dowry from the families of prospective husbands.

We wonder now that Rifca is the grand old age of 27, does she still hold her record or has someone else taken over the title of world's youngest grandmother?