Having A Baby When She Was Still A Baby

One year after Rifca was married to Ionel, she fell pregnant with her first child and gave birth to baby Maria at 12-years of age. It would only be one year after she had Maria when she had her second child. This time, she had a boy whom she named Nicolae. And despite her own past, Rifca shares that this was not something she wanted for her own children.

Making Things Right

Rifca explains, “My dad was really annoyed at being cheated out of the right to decide who would be my husband and the dowry. 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.”