Dealing with such strains is a challenge for any family business but especially for those involving minor children, said Maurice Schweitzer , a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

He said those enterprises needed to find ways in which parents could be a business manager while maintaining the traditional role of caregiver.

“In a family, the basic tenets of that relationship are not reflected by a market economy,” said Dr. Schweitzer, who studies family businesses. “When you look at your children, you don’t think, ‘When I think about the value of food and clothes that I give you, it should be commensurate with the value that you have created.’ Yet, within an organization, when you lose track of value creation, you’re not going to be very successful.”

The most successful parent-child businesses set clear guidelines about home and work, he said. “You can draw lines like: ‘When we’re at home at the dinner table, we don’t talk about work. At work, we don’t talk about family.’”

Some parent-child businesses aspire to a long-term business goal. In Chillicothe, Ohio, 13-year-old , Khayta Diongue , runs KSD Coffee, a catering company, with help from her mother, Lesha Malone.

Less than a year after it was founded, the company serves coffee at one or two events a month, and has made a profit of about $2,500 on revenue of $3,500 from around 10 events catering to as many as 300 people, Khayta said. Her goal is to open a coffee shop in 2024, when she turns 18, at an anticipated cost of $250,000.

At age 11, she attended an entrepreneurial academy, where she learned skills like marketing, finance and how to describe your business in an “elevator pitch” lasting just a few seconds.