The bizarre 1974 law made international headlines a decade ago when then-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner became godmother to a Jewish baby for the first time.

A couple with seven sons or seven daughters is allowed under the law to request that the president becomes the seventh child’s godfather or godmother.

The president is required to accept, to send a representative to the child’s baptism, and to make a small financial contribution to the child’s education.

Though law since 1974, the tradition dates back to the 1900s and was brought to Argentina by Russian immigrants. The practice has been long abandoned in Russia.

It is widely – but wrongly – believed that the law is linked to a superstition that the seventh son or seventh daughter of any family needs a godparent to stop them from being transformed into a werewolf or ‘lobizón’.

“The local myth of the lobizón is not in any way connected to the custom that began over 100 years ago by which every seventh son (or seventh daughter) born in Argentina becomes godchild to the president,” Argentine historian Daniel Balmaceda told The Guardian in 2014.

The 1974 law is one of a huge number put on the chopping block by Argentina’s radical libertarian president Javier Milei, according to Argentina Reports.