Is it possible that these elderly women just love children (not in a “bad” way), and want to be around them? Perhaps they don’t have grandchildren, or perhaps their grandchildren live far away, or perhaps their grandchildren are grown up.
My mother loved children and babies, and I can see her sitting with young moms just so she could be around them. She also had wonderful advice for young moms, who often came to her for help with their questions about their babies.
OTOH, if the ladies are just chatting and socializing and clearly not interested in babies and young mothers (or the Mass), then my approach would be to speak to the priest (privately) and ask him to intervene. There’s a good chance that he will step into the cry room before Mass and kindly ask the ladies to please move into the pews in the nave and allow the cry room to be used exclusively by parents and children.
One more possibility that just occurred to me–it’s possible that the pews in the nave are hard and uncomfortable for older bones, and perhaps the ladies appreciate the softer sofas and armchairs in the cry room. What I’ve seen elderly people do is bring a seat cushion with them to sit on the hard pews. Again, the priest could kindly suggest this to the woman, if this is the case.
No matter what the explanation, I would turn this over to the priest. Even if the ladies love children, they should allow the room to be used for its purpose–young families with babies and very young children, and sometimes special needs older children who require extraordinary care which might be noisy and therefore distracting for others.
Perhaps parishes should take a clue from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and create a 'Strangers Room" for all the people who want to talk throughout the Mass! In the Sherlock Holmes stories, Holmes’s brother Mycroft is a founding member of the strangest “club” in London–the Diogenes Club, in which the members are NOT PERMITTED to take the slightest notice of each other. Silence is the rule–no one can talk to anyone else–except in the Stranger’s Room, which is where members can bring their friends (if they have any) and visitors who are inquiring about joining the Diogenes Club. If parishes had a Stranger’s Room, people who prefer to talk and socialize during Mass instead of remaining silent could do so without disturbing others (e.g., the OP of this thread!). Or they could use the room to do a text conversation. Problem solved?!
