Time & Perspective Quote by Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Corporate America has always loved the idea of “family” as long as it stays metaphorical: the company as a loyal clan, the boss as benevolent parent, the workforce as devoted children. Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s line punctures that sentimentality by pointing to a quieter tradition running underneath the slogans: a persistent unease about what happens when employees have actual families, with needs that can’t be optimized into a quarterly plan.

The specific intent is diagnostic, not moralistic. Kanter is naming a pattern that executives often treat as a new problem every generation: parental leave, caregiving, flexible schedules, “work-life balance.” By calling the ambivalence “long history,” she strips away the convenient myth that today’s debates are just the collateral damage of smartphones or remote work. The discomfort is structural, baked into a corporate model that prizes uninterrupted availability and rewards those whose private lives can be outsourced, ignored, or absorbed by someone else.

The subtext carries a feminist edge without needing to say “women” outright. “Family responsibilities” historically meant mothers’ labor, and corporate “ambivalence” often shows up as polite skepticism: the promotion that pauses, the leadership track that narrows, the assumption that devotion is measured in late nights. Even when policies exist, the culture can still punish the people who use them.

Context matters: Kanter’s career is rooted in studying power, organizations, and how institutions reproduce inequality while claiming neutrality. Her sentence works because it reframes the issue from personal choice to corporate inheritance. This isn’t individual failure to “manage it all.” It’s a workplace tradition of treating care as an inconvenient exception rather than a normal part of human life.