[Excerpt] This book contains essays written by thirty-four mother-scientists whose stories provide insight into the choices they have made to create balance in their lives. Contributors to this book work part-time or full-time, opt out, and opt back in. They've become entrepreneurs, they job-share, and they volunteer. They work in academia, industry, consulting, state and federal government, and on their own. Some of these women who have chosen to stray from the straight and narrow road paved by mentors, advisors, and scientists before them by working part-time, or who no longer coax data from the bench or the field, have a sense that they have become an invisible, underutilized, and misunderstood workforce. They often feel marginalized when they attempt to return or interact with the more traditional workforce.