Two weeks before her mother's death on June 29, 1967, Mansfield, then 16, accused her mother's then boyfriend, Sam Brody, of beating her. Her statement to the Los Angeles Police Department the following morning implicated her mother in encouraging the abuse, and days later, a juvenile-court judge awarded temporary custody of Jayne Marie to a great-uncle, W.W. Pigue. Out of Jayne's five children, only Jayne Marie attended her mother's funeral on July 3, 1967 due to the fact the other children were all under the age of 10. In 1968, wrongful death lawsuits were filed on behalf of Jayne Marie and Matt Cimber, Jayne's husband from September 24, 1964 to July 11, 1965 and producer-director of her last film Single Room Furnished, the former for $4.8 million and the latter for $2.7 million.

In 1970, she married Barry Lang in Las Vegas, Nevada and the couple had one son but were later divorced. As of 2008, Mansfield is in a long-term relationship and frequently visits her grandchildren. In March 1979, she declared her plan to write a biography of her mother.

Mansfield was featured in Playboy a second time in December of the same year, as one of the "sex stars of 1976". Photographed by Arthur Knight, she was featured again in the April 1980 Playmate Reunion section of the magazine. The issue also featured Cyndi Wood, Monique St. Pierre, Sondra Theodore, Carol Vitale, Dolly Read, and Candy Loving, as well as Hugh Hefner, the printer, Editor and publisher of magazine.

The credit for the first Playmate of the Month whose mother was another Playmate of the Month goes to Simone Eden, from the February 1989 issue, whose mother, Carol Eden, was on the centerfold in December 1960. The credit for the first daughters to appear together with the mother goes to Dawn and Shannon Davis who appeared in the August 1993 issue with their mother, Tamara Davis. That Arny Freytag pictorial was titled Like Mother, Like Daughters after the title for a 1968 movie featuring Playmate Victoria Valentino. Of the featured daughters, only Mansfield was included in the 1988 Playboy 100 Beautiful Women Newsstand Special magazine, along with a picture from Hooker pictorial. The issue also featured her mother.

An image of Mansfield from the pictorial appears in Shock Value: A Tasteful Book About Bad Taste by John Waters (Thunder's Mouth Press, 2005), which has a section dedicated to star daughters. The pictorial also appeared on the Playboy Newsstand Special titled Blonds Brunettes Redheads (also featured Claudia Ohana, Loretta Martin, Francoise Gayat and Shannon Tweed) in 1985, and the September 1976 issue of A Revista do Homem, the Brazilian version of Playboy (also featuring Vera Manhães).