Beyonce spends £1 million on baby Blue Ivy as poverty-stricken Greek mothers give their children away

And another desperate mother, Maria, was forced to give up her eight-year-old daughter Anastasia after losing her job.

She said: "Every night I cry alone at home, but what can I do? It hurt my heart, but I didn't have a choice."

If you think this disparity is something that just goes on in the rest of the world, think again.

The most recent study by Save the Children revealed that in some major cities more than one in four children live in penury.

The charity said 1.6m youngsters lived in "severe poverty" and described it as a "national scandal".

The Government defines severe poverty as a household with half the average income - for a family of four this would be pay of less than £12,500 - that also suffers from material deprivation.

For example, this would mean children were unable to take a holiday or invite friends home for tea and adults were not able to pay for repairs to fridges or afford insurance.



Of course, most families in Britian don't live in poverty – but which of us is not aware of the need to tighten our belts during these straitened times?

On a personal note, I would love to splash the cash on lavish presents and parties for my three children – but I can't afford it.

They don't go short – but they don't get spoilt either.

I guess we're typical of most families, spending around £100 on Christmas gifts for our kids, who, on average, will cost us around £10,000 a year – that's £210,000 until they reach 21 years old (by which time they will have, hopefully, left home).

Or put another way, a fifth of what Beyoncé lavished on Blue Ivy with a click of her diamond-draped fingers.

But baby Blue isn't the only child who – by any definition of the word – can be described as "spoilt".

Twins Max and Emme Anthony (the children of Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony) had their own personal masseuse when they were born two years ago, on top of 600-count Egyptian cotton cot linen, diamond-engraved rattles and two small Shetland ponies.

Christina Aguilera and her husband Jordan Bratman started spoiling their son Max before he was even born. Max came home from the hospital and straight into a custom-made 600 square-foot, sailboat-themed nursery.

And even though our own Victoria Beckham often states in interviews that she doesn't want her children to be spoilt, they live an existence beyond our children's wildest dreams.

When Brooklyn was born, Posh and Becks installed a US$50,000 fibre-optic ceiling to a bedroom already painted with 8,000 cartoon characters! And when not attending sports games or dressing up in designer clobber Brooklyn and his brothers play in a $20,000 tree house.

In the meantime, in Greece, parents are giving their children away.

Father Antonios Papanikolaou , of the Athens Ark of the World youth centre, told the Mirror: "Over the last year we've had hundreds of parents who want to leave their children with us. They know us and trust us.

"They say they do not have any money or shelter or food for their kids, so they hope we might be able to provide them with what they need."

Sick, isn't it?

What do you think about this gross disparity?