Celebrity Moms in Cuffs

Some celebrity mothers, like Courtney Love, have acquired such a reputation for misconduct that their legal transgressions are hardly shocking. Indeed, Love's notoriety and entanglement with drugs, alcohol, and physical violence is more widely cited than any memory of Hole, the rock band for which she sang for 12 years until 2001. Vanity Fair even published a controversial report that Love used heroin while she was pregnant with Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain's daughter.

After Cobain's 1994 suicide, Love faced another battle. She lost custody of daughter Frances Bean, then 11 years old, in 2003 after she was arrested and charged with possession of hydrocodone and oxycodone without a prescription.

Yet, other stars, like Susan Sarandon, have faced arrest for offenses like disorderly conduct during political rallies -- an act far less detrimental to family well-being than, say, possession of illegal drugs or drunk driving.

In Pictures: Celebrity Moms in Cuffs

More galleries on Forbes.com

• Celebrities In Court
• Celebrities Who Owe It All To Mom
• Star Moms' Weight-Loss Secrets
• The World's Richest Women

In 1999, Academy Award-winner Sarandon was arrested at police headquarters in New York City, where she was protesting the shooting of an unarmed man. More than 800 people were arrested in the two weeks following the widely-publicized incident, when four cops fired 41 bullets at Amadou Diallo, a 22-year-old African immigrant, near his home in the Bronx. A trial jury later found the four officers not guilty.

"If we're not here today, then we're saying that what happened is acceptable and normal, and I think that does a disservice to the other police," Sarandon told reporters at the protest. Sarandon has three children -- a daughter, actress Eva Amurri, with director Frank Amurri, and two sons, Jack and Miles, with actor Tim Robbins.

From Nicole Richie to Diana Ross, celebrity moms who face constant criticism every day from the public and the press capture even more of the spotlight when they have run-ins with the cops, earning them a kind of infamous badge of honor.

The increased scrutiny stars face for their wrongdoings is fair, says psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow. "Because you know you have placed your family in the public eye, and it would be unreasonable to expect that people are going to turn away when you do things that are dramatic," says Ablow, who is the founder of livingthetruth.com. "So when you decide to become a kind of product, you can't really decide in which ways people are going to consume you."

It's not just celebrity parents but all parents who should adhere to sky-high behavioral standards, according to Dr. Arlie Albrecht, a marriage and family therapist who practices in Green Bay, Wisc. "Because of that, we're older and supposedly wiser and making better choices," Albrecht says. "I think that, those of us who have children, we should hold ourselves up to a higher standard."

While there isn't one mothering strategy that works for every family, according to Linda Lisi Juergens, executive director of National Association of Mothers' Centers, what's lacking is a pool of reliable resources for parents to learn how they can satisfy their children's intellectual, social and recreational needs. Celebrities generally have more childcare options and more scheduling flexibility, but they, like all moms, would benefit from guidance and advice from professionals.

Juergens says misbehaving mothers are a particular reason for concern, since they have such a poignant influence on their childrens' lives. "I think there would be a worry for a person who is not acting responsibly or legally or morally or ethically ... what's not there is offering support to that parent so that they don't go down that road."

The good news? An arrest and subsequent public airing of a mom's problem provides an excuse to insist on necessary care for the adult in need.

"With things such as drunk driving or low-level drug use, sometimes that's an opportunity for families, if that's been a longstanding problem, to intervene if treatment is necessary," says Dr. Albrecht.

Take, for example, Wynonna Judd, the country singer who was arrested for drunk driving in Nashville in November 2003. In a breath analysis test for blood alcohol content, Judd, then 38, measured twice Tennessee's legal limit. Judd's first marriage resulted in two children, Elijah and Grace, and, after marrying her former bodyguard, D.R. Roach, in 2003, his son Zac joined the family. But by the time Roach was arrested in 2006 on charges of sexual assault and battery against a minor, Judd had shaped up, filed for divorce, and rediscovered her maternal side. "My first response when it happened was, I am a mother first and foremost," Judd told Ladies' Home Journal in a 2007 interview.

Indeed, Ablow believes bonds between mothers and children are resilient and fairly easy to mend after a traumatic event, even one as degrading as a tussle with police.

"I've treated enough families where one parent dramatically underperforms and remains loved by their children," he says. "I think there's the chance that any individual can reclaim a position of moral authority and self-esteem -- and esteem in the eyes of people you care about."