(FORTUNE Magazine) – Once when I was working on a story about a company facing a horrendous legal problem, I went to see the general counsel. I arrived on time for the interview, but he was nowhere to be found. When he finally arrived an hour late, he explained, nonchalantly, that he had been delayed because he'd been at his son's soccer game. "I always make time for that. Some things are more important than this stuff," he added, pointing disdainfully to the piles of documents on his desk. Then he flashed me the smug smile of the morally superior.

I realize that in baby-boom America, the only proper response is to applaud the man for "having his priorities straight." What, after all, is a multibillion-dollar lawsuit when a child's soccer game beckons? In the pantheon of baby-boom virtues, nothing ranks higher than being there for every blessed one of our children's Kodak moments. But do we really have our priorities so straight? I wonder. Without question it's unhealthy to be so consumed by work that the kids feel abandoned. But there is also something unhealthy about so sanctifying family time that we diminish the importance of work. Yet that is precisely the judgment our culture now renders on a regular basis.

The work/family argument is based on three assumptions, all partially wrong-headed. The first is that no matter what's going on at the office, it can't be more important than coaching your kid's basketball team. Well, sometimes it isn't, and sometimes it is. Sometimes other people's jobs are at stake, or a crisis has to be averted. Sometimes you need to accomplish something in your work for the sheer satisfaction of it. And sometimes that means staying late or working on weekends. Why should it be such a sin to admit this out loud? Far more galling is the underlying premise that in "being there" for our kids we are being better parents than our own fathers were. What rubbish! They may not have been around as much as we are, but that's because they were out earning a living. They didn't have the option of running home to see our school recitals. Nor did they have the option of quitting if they were assigned to a job they didn't like. For our sake, they stuck it out, and unlike us, they didn't whine about it. In the process, they built an economy so powerful that our generation is still largely living off it. We should be thanking them, not cursing them.

What I find most wrong-headed, though, is the pervasive notion that to be ambitious at the office, or to care deeply about one's work, is to be morally inferior. You see this attitude manifested everywhere, especially on television and in the movies. High-powered corporate types are lavished with praise when they quit to spend more time with their families. So common has this practice become in baby-boom America that I half-expect the nation's preeminent boomer, Bill Clinton, to resign from the presidency because he's not getting to spend enough time with Chelsea.

One thing I always wonder about upon reading such announcements is whether the kids are really going to want dad around that much. But I also find myself wondering why we are so approving of people who still have an enormous amount to give to society yet have chosen instead to withdraw into the bosom of family. From where I'm sitting, it looks like so much else about baby-boom America: self-indulgence masquerading as virtue.

One of the most recent to abandon his high-pressure job was Labor Secretary Robert Reich. Granted there are few positions more demanding than a Cabinet post, but Reich couldn't resist telling the world what a swell guy he was to turn his back on Washington for his kids. I heard him do so on National Public Radio one evening as I was driving home with my three children. As Reich began to speak about his decision, my own kids became very quiet. They were clearly hanging on his every word. I knew exactly what they were thinking. My work causes me to be away a fair amount and, on occasion, to work long hours even when I'm home, something my kids complain about regularly. Sure enough, when Reich finished, my youngest son, age 7, piped up. "Why don't you quit your job, Dad?"

I hemmed and hawed, trying to figure how to respond. Finally I told them the truth. "I love you guys," I said, "but I love my job too. I don't want to quit." As they groaned in unison, I smiled the helpless smile of the morally beaten-down.

Joseph Nocera lives in idyllic Northampton, Massachusetts, with his wife, a part-time journalist and former diplomat, who is currently raising their three perfect children.