Many family factors can be triggers for youth offending. Chief among these are criminal or anti-social parents.

Monogamy is suddenly becoming popular in the gay community now same-sex couples can get married, an Auckland couple says.

CYF is investigating a video in which a boy, 6, is seen sculling from a Heineken bottle as part of a Neknominate dare.

Almost 5 per cent of all marriages of NZ residents were between same-sex couples in the first four months after gay marriage became legal.

First-home buyers have snapped up a quarter of the vacant state houses put up for sale by the Govt, some for under $100,000.

Child Youth and Family are investigating a video in which a 6-year-old boy is seen drinking from a beer bottle as part of a Neknominate dare.

We are a conservative society. Minority groups with abnormal inclinations are often frowned upon, writes Peter Lyons.

Bill in works to make domestic violence a factor at sentencing - but first, the beach.

A drinking game played through social media which has caught on in NZ has been labelled "incredibly foolish" and "very, very harmful" by an alcohol-harm advocacy group.

Mandy and Clair Cordo share the hard lessons they have learned on their journeys in this third story on love in the 21st century.

A video of a drunk boy stumbling and slurring at a Hamilton skate park has been reposted to YouTube despite an earlier attempt by police to have Google remove it.

Words can hardly express the harm inflicted on a 9-year-old boy in Hamilton this week by someone who gave him enough alcohol to get very drunk.

Oh the shame of reading the Daily Mail online and seeing two stories from New Zealand featuring prominently.

Of 8,001 beneficiaries sent for jobs requiring drug testing, only 22 tested positive or refused to take tests, a result that has been greeted as a victory by the Social Development Minister.

Three people have been charged with giving alcohol to a 9-year-old who was filmed, apparently drunk, at a Hamilton skatepark.

A video of an apparently drunk Hamilton boy has been removed from YouTube - but not before more than half a million people watched the uncensored footage.

The mother of a Hamilton boy filmed celebrating his ninth birthday drinking at a skatepark says she was shocked and angry to discover he'd been consuming alcohol.

Child care law changes sought by lobby group after children denied right to family life.

Graphic images of a couple taken after they were shot on a Libyan beach have been removed from Facebook after site administrators were inundated with angry emails.

Ill-prepared families are dumping elderly relatives at hospitals before going on their holidays in a practice known as "granny dumping".

An Indian IT worker wonders if it was racism that made a bouncer stop him and his friends from entering a bar at Auckland's Viaduct Harbour on New Year's Eve.

If ... parents had introduced children to newspapers ... rather than addiction to idiotic texting, they would be addicted to the world, writes Bob Jones.

Most societies are hard on their youth, writes Peter Lyons.

So, rich fulla, enjoy your throbbing car, but also be aware that not being a dickhead takes constant, painstaking, vigilant effort, writes Deborah Hill Cone. Also: don't drive through zebra crossings.

Australian, Queensland and Broncos league star Sam Thaiday is lending his weight to fundraising efforts for a charity helping at-risk South Auckland teenagers.

The measurement of child poverty is complex, hard to understand and has become a highly polarised matter, says John Dew.

Next year is election year and all the parties have an opportunity to show us their commitment to children, writes Russell Wills, Children's Commissioner.