Parents & Kids

I recently went down a rabbit hole. It started in a conversation when someone mentioned Genghis Khan and how it’s believed approximately 16 million men alive today are directly descended from him.

Why stop there?

According to Guinness, the mother who has given birth to the most children is a peasant from Shuya, Russia. She had 69 children - 16 twins, 7 triplets, and 4 quadruplets. That’s 27 pregnancy events over the course of her life. Assuming ages 18-40, she was pregnant every 0.8 years. Very little down time. Very impressive.

Ismail Ibn Sharif on the other hand is the father believed to have the most kids. He had 868 confirmed children with a harem of over 500 women. He died in 1727.

The youngest mother is Lina Medina, who gave birth when she was 5 years old. Apparently it’s rare but possible to go through puberty at an unusually early age. The youngest father is a boy from China who fathered a child in 1910. Although I couldn’t find any good sources for that, so it’s probably this 11 year old from New Zealand.

The oldest mother is Maria del Carmen, who had twins at the age of 66 through IVF. The oldest father is 94.