10-year-old reportedly gives birth, "Omg! How awful! She is still a baby herself :(" tweeted one woman in response to news that a 10-year-old Romanian girl gave birth last week after being rushed to a hospital in the southern Spanish city of Cadiz.

The Twitter user's astonishment was not universal, however. Medical staffers involved in the baby's delivery last week were shocked when the girl's mother treated the birth as a commonplace event, describing it as "something usual in my country," The Associated Press reported.

"Another explanation given to us [for the mother's reaction] was that the girl lived with her boyfriend [in Romania]," the AP report said. The baby's father is reportedly a minor, and it is unknown whether he was present when the girl was taken to the emergency room for a cesarean section after doctors feared her young age would cause delivery complications. The baby was born naturally and in good health.

Officials are debating who should be given custody of the child. For now, the Junta de Andalucia Council for Equality and Social Welfare has decided that the baby will remain in the care of the girl's parents as social workers monitor the case.

According to the National Statistics Institute of Spain, 177 girls under the age of 15 gave birth in Spain during 2008, and 48 of those births occurred in Andalucia -- an upsetting number given the medical risks associated with giving birth at a young age.

Studies show that because young mothers' bodies are still growing, they are more likely to give birth prematurely and their babies are at a higher risk of dying by the age of 1, not to mention the fact that those children who do survive are at a higher risk of suffering developmental disabilities.

The youngest mother on record is Lina Medina, who was just 5 years old when she gave birth to a son in Peru in 1939. Investigators were unable to determine the details of the child's conception.


Read More at The Associated Press.