As Prince pointed out: 'All those little trainers and bikes  -  £50 here, £40 there. If I had no children, I'd be a rich man now.'

Many single mothers are excellent parents, of course. But the Government has put disadvantaged girls in a position where the only career open to them, the only possibility of an independent life, is to have children  -  whether they want to or not, whether they are likely to be good mothers or not.

The state, as Prince pointed out, has indeed taken over the role of both husband and employer.

With a combination of financial incentives and poor schools, it is ensuring a steady supply of babies who start life with all the factors in place to become the next generation living on benefits or the proceeds of crime.

What is the Government doing about this cynical cycle of deprivation?

Over the past few years, it has come up with a plethora of schemes to intervene ever earlier in the life of a disadvantaged child. In other words, it has concentrated on the consequences of single parenthood  -  but not the cause.

Failing to address the poor education on offer at too many of our schools and the incentive of benefits is self-defeating.

What is the point of setting targets to end child poverty when the Government's policies are creating tomorrow's poorest children  -  and grandchildren? Between 1979 and
2003, the number of single parents more than doubled  -  from 1.4million to 3.2million.

Even Government advisors acknowledge that this is a major factor in the increase in child poverty.

So why hasn't the Government reformed the benefit system? It's as if they're offering car drivers a bonus for every crash  -  then acting surprised when accidents shoot up.

Boys with two parents are more likely to attend school regularly; they are also far less likely to be thrown out of school.

There is a wealth of research to show that boys, in particular, need fathers  -  but single mothers don't always see it that way.

In Manchester, I visited Simone, the mother of three boys from three different fathers  -  all well-known criminals in her community.

An attractive, slender black woman in her 30s, with elaborately tattooed shoulders, she was bouncing a baby on her lap in the sitting-room of her council flat.

At a side-table, next to an empty bottle of Moet and Chandon, her 18-year- old son Dion, who'd recently been convicted of driving without a licence, was folding up a pile of ironed clothes.

Dion had begun truanting in Year 9, and now Simone didn't know what to do with him. 'His school should have got the kids out more, taken them away on holidays and at weekends. One day's work experience would have helped,' she complained.

The idea of going to college held no appeal for Dion. 'I can't sit in one place too long,' he said.

Simone commented: 'You talk and talk and talk until you tired of talking. I don't want him to be a lawyer.' She turned to him: 'Just do your ting on the side [sell drugs] and have a job.'

Dion, she said, spends 'too much time' hanging about with his friends. 'It's boring, they're in each other's face all the time.

'That's where this violence comes from  -  boredom. One's got better trainers than another and they kick off.'

When I asked Dion about his father, he said: 'I don't know where he is  -  he's never played a part in my life.' Did Simone feel he lacked a father figure? 'Once upon a time, I would have said it didn't matter,' she said. 'Now I think it's important. You do need a man around.'

Simone is obviously a loving mother, but she had Dion at 16 and has never worked.

It hasn't occurred to her to march her son down to the local college to sign up; nor does she know anyone in work to give him a helping hand.

This is crucial because, according to Britain's chief inspector of schools, boys like Dion are unlikely to get it from school.

The requirement to include ' work-related' and 'enterprise learning' in secondary schools has not yet been 'embraced wholeheartedly' by all, she admitted in her annual report.

The result? The number of vulnerable young people like Dion  -  who are not in education, employment or training  -  'is alarming and unacceptable'.

The contrast between Dion and a group of boys living on an estate not 15 minutes' walk away was sharp. They looked similar: all seven of them, aged between 13 and 15, were wearing hoodies; and when I came across them, they were jumping up and down on a garage roof and throwing things to the ground.

But unlike Dion, these boys  -  one Somali, one Iraqi, two white, two black and one mixed race  -  could talk confidently about what they expected to be doing in five years' time.

The two white boys were attending Cadets and thinking about joining the Army.

Mustapha explained he wanted to be a plumber because 'most of my dad's friends are plumbers'  -  and they'd offered him work experience.

Raphael played a lot of sport and planned to be a PE teacher. Hussain was going to be an engineer, like his uncle: 'My dad drops me off at my uncle's most weekends and he shows me what he's doing.'

What effect does a father have, I asked? 'You want to follow in their footsteps,' said one, and they loudly chorused their agreement.

Only Gabriel had relied on his mother to find him work experience. And Cody planned to work for his mother's boyfriend, who'd come out of prison, failed to find a job and started his own scrap-metal business.

As far as they knew, the families of their classmates weren't making any effort to find activities for them. 'So they go out,' said Mustapha. 'And follow bad boys.'

Steve said he knew his dad was sending him to Cadets 'because he doesn't want me getting into gangs. I could get seriously injured and hurt.'

And, poignantly, Raphael added:

'Everyone will give up on you, but a dad doesn't because he's your dad.'

Later, I talked to Bigs, a black man in his late 20s who is the former leader of one of the most notorious gangs in Brixton, South London.

There was a big divide at school, he said, between those who had single parents and the mainly white boys who had fathers.

At primary school, the boys 'had all started from the same place.' But when they all began misbehaving at 14, the white boys' fathers would send them off to the Cadets or to their mates, who worked in various manual trades, for training.

The father of one boy  -  'a nut case, a real live-wire,' according to Bigs  -  took him to the Cadets and told the colonel: 'I don't care what you do to my boy, but he's going down the wrong road and needs straightening out.' Bigs, who was brought up by a single mother, wasn't so lucky.

Far from being taken in hand, he was serving his first jail sentence at 15.

The absence of a male role model has a particularly profound effect on disadvantaged boys during their teenage years.

A third of 14-to-25-year-olds questioned for a survey by the Prince's Trust did not have a parent whom they considered a role model.

More than half said they'd joined a gang to acquire a sense of identity, while a quarter said they were in search of someone to look up to.

These boys are unlikely to find male role models in schools. The number of male teachers has slumped to its lowest level in at least 20 years; and in primary school, 85 per cent of teachers are female. Even in youth offending teams, women make up the majority of the staff.

This year, according to the latest research, one in three children who live with a single mother will spend less than six hours a week with a male role model  -  whether a father figure, relative or teacher.

All the odds are stacked against them. Even children on the 'at risk' register are five times more likely to have single teenage mothers  -  as Prince knows all too well.

Two of his children, he discovered recently, were being neglected by their 19-year-old mother.

'The house was like a crack house: dirty clothes everywhere,' he said. 'She fed them crappy food, she left the kids [to] fall asleep in front of the TV. My boy was underweight and quiet.'

Social services removed the children and gave them to their maternal grandmother to bring up. But Prince's ex-girlfriend, he says, has made no attempt to get her children back.

He shrugged. 'She's never had a job. She's lived off the Government and what men give her.'

Now, she is pregnant by another man. Having another baby, she has told her friends, will allow her to keep her council flat. 

...........and look what they are planning next!......