DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services

One Friday afternoon during the O. J. Simpson trial, Marcia Clark had to leave the courthouse early in order to pick up her two boys. On the following Monday she faced accusations from the defense that she had used her children as an excuse to stall in her case preparation. Also on that day, Clark's former husband Gordon filed a suit for custody of the boys, charging that she was "never home and never has any time to spend with them."

According to Department of Labor statistics, there are 23 million working mothers in America, and 80 percent of all divorced mothers are among their ranks. Legal practice has tended to favor custody for the woman, with men only gaining custody in 11 percent of cases. In the 1800s, though, husbands usually got custody, and in the 1970s, a number of courts tried the approach of joint, or shared, custody. But as LynNell Hancock and Judith Regan observed in a Newsweek article on the Clark case, "It turns out that couples who couldn't live together often can't manage children together, either."