Monday, March 7th 2011, 12:52 PM

EuroPicsRifca Stanescu is now 25 and grandmother to a little boy aged two-and-a-half. She was married when she was 11.

A 25-year-old Romanian woman could be the world's youngest grandmother.

Rifca Stanescu gave birth to her first child, Maria, at age 12, a British tabloid, The Sun, reported Monday. She urged her daughter not to follow in her footsteps, but the girl also gave birth to a child before reaching her teen years.

Maria reportedly gave birth to her son, Ion, two years ago - when she was just 11 - making mother Stanescu a grandmother at 23.

"I am happy to be a grandmother but wished more for Maria," Stanescu told The Sun.

Stanescu, who lives in the village Investi, married when she was 11 and her husband, Ionel, was 13. The pair eloped so Rifca could escape an arranged marriage planned by her father.

Stanescu (center), her husband Ionel and grandson Ion. (EuroPics) 

"My dad was really annoyed at being cheated out of the right to decide who would be my husband and the dowry," she said. "But then I got pregnant when I was 12 - a year later - and that meant that my husband's family paid my father a dowry and then there was peace." 

The family lives in a gypsy community, and Stanescu says it is common in their culture to become engaged and marry at a young age. Women are expected to be virgins when they marry, and many are betrothed while they are toddlers.

"Ion [her grandson] is a good boy and he is already engaged to a girl aged 8," Stanescu told the Daily Mail.

Stanescu's mother - also named Maria - became a great-grandmother at age 40 when Ion was born.

Stanescu says she encouraged her daughter to stay in school, but the girl dropped out when she was 10 to get married and had her first child six months later.

There is no listing in the Guiness World Records for the world's youngest grandmother.

The Sun reports Britain's youngest grandmother was a 26-year-old woman whose daughter gave birth at age 12 in 1999.

"I did not try to stop my daughter getting married because this is the tradition," she told The Daily Mail. "It's what happens."