You can breed a woman past the age of 50 except she just won't have the babies.

The method i use to get master parents is get the person you want to get master parent and an fairly old villager of the oppisite gender. Then i drag the master parent-to-be constantly on to the older villager, and within about 10-15mins i will have a master parent. You can do this method at any age.

I have done that numerous times and it did not work for the two women I was trying to get to master parenting (both one step away from being elders). One I constanly mated with the esteem elder I bred her with when they were younger nothing happened - her bar did not move.
The other one I also uses an elder with but to no avail and then used a younger guy- again to no avail.

I spent over 20 mins on each women with the constant mating- then even used the teaching method - nothing happened : (

I thought maybe I was doing something wrong.

Are you sure that you was dropping the master-to-be on the villager all the time and not missing them??

The bar stays at the same place for a while just before they become master... how long did you stick to "speedkissing" the villager?

about 15-20 mins where spent just on "speed kissing' I spent hours trying everything yesterday only to find both women passed away this morning (non-elders) when I checked the game before leaving for work - which I should be doing now

Any other suggestions

A woman gains skill in parenting each time she kisses a man. How many times it is before she become a master I've no idea, but it is probably in the thousands. She doesn't have to have any babies to become a master; I've often had master parents who have never had a baby if the population has been at the maximum.

Dropping the woman on a likely-looking man several times in succession probably will work best in increasing parenting skills. Every time they kiss she gains skill. The main problem is when the population is at maximum; you'll get a message that there is not enough housing available pop up each time. That has to be okayed before you can pick her up and drop her on the man again. Telling a story to/teaching the children also increases their skill, but takes much longer.

My village is presently at 48 so I am not running into any population problems. ( I like a smaller village)

I have done the speed kissing a lot, using the adapt parent as the initiator - never seems to work for me.

At this point all I can do is keep trying.

Hopefully I will finally succeed to have a master parent

You will get a master parent just keep "speed kissing" and you will eventually get one.

The children live in the arms of their mothers for two years that is why the child is two when it appears on the details chart. You can't see a child until it is two.

My problem came when I bred two villager, the population count went up, but the mother did not have a child in her arms after her trip into the love shack. I bred her again and when she came out of the love shack she had one baby. This happened twice.
I keep track of all my villagers by name and of course count the babies in the mothers arms as part of my population. When this occured I thought maybe I miscounted but after numerous recounts I was still 2 short of the population number.
Then after the other babies turned two and left their mothers arms I ended up with two new children villagers Pita and Amago with no parents listed on their screen. No they did not come in a barrell or by any other thing that occured during the game that I know of. But when counted they are the missing villagers number in my count So they are the mystery children.

Strange!! Anyone know what happened?

They are not twins, by any chance? Look in their details and look at who's next to them in age. It might have been a glitch where the mother had twins but only one baby was shown.