The Big Family Fight Is Over How to Work. ‘They Think I’m Insane.’

Hybrid work. Hustle culture. Work-life balance.

Tensions over how to work don’t just permeate offices these days. They’re on full display within families.

“They think I’m insane,” Lisa Olson, 53, said of her children when she tells them she skipped lunch during the workday.

Her 25-year-old daughter, Emily Olson, tends to fit her job in advertising around her life, sometimes taking a midday break but also logging on after-hours if there’s work to be done. She thinks her mom struggles to make time for herself.

Like with the Olsons, many of these debates break along generational lines. Many parents in their 50s and 60s built careers in pay-your-dues work environments where 40 hours was the minimum spent in an office each week. They had clear-cut templates for getting ahead.

Their children, in contrast, joined the labor force over the past decade, as the gig economy took off, a pandemic upended 22 million jobs and millions of people embraced working from home. Technologies such as AI are scrambling their careers even more.

These debates about work are often more pointed, and personal, at home than on the job. Parents and their adult children say these conversations are often meaningful in navigating today’s multigenerational workforce.

“These are people who’ve known you all your life—you hope they understand what really matters to you,” said Megan Gerhardt, a management professor at Miami University’s Farmer School of Business and the author of a book about intergenerational workforces.

Emily has worked mostly remotely since graduating from college in 2020. One benefit is that she can integrate errands into her workday. Her mother, who works in financial services, urges her to go into the office.

“When you’re remote, you hop on a Teams call, and you talk about the issue at hand—and you don’t necessarily have extra time in that meeting to chat,” Lisa said.

Emily said that when she does commute to work, she often interacts with co-workers virtually since not all of her team lives in Chicago, where she’s based.

As long as she does good work and is responsive, working set hours in a set place isn’t important to her, she said. When a call was unexpectedly rescheduled to a Friday afternoon, when work is usually winding down, she logged on from the hair salon while getting highlights.

“It doesn’t have to be a rigid workday,” said Emily, who often works more than 40 hours each week.

Lisa, on the other hand, said she spent much of her career leaving for work at 7 a.m., and returning at 7 p.m., five days a week. “In my world, work is a completely separate item from my personal life,” she said.

Kristin Ned, 48, has logged long hours over her career in human resources, ready to respond to emergencies. Her 28-year-old daughter, Maaliyah Papillion, gives priority to rest when she’s not on the clock.

“She and I are not on the same page when it comes to what it takes to get something done,” said Ned, who lives in Lake Charles, La. “I know not everything can happen between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.”

Papillion started an executive-assistant job this summer in New Orleans. A priority was professional boundaries, especially since she was embarking on a master’s program and had less free time.

“If work is over, work is over,” she said.

One Sunday night, Papillion got a work call. “Can it wait until tomorrow?” she replied. Later, she consulted her mom.

No one wants to make a work call on a Sunday night, Ned said, so it must have been important. Papillion said she now sees that little gestures go a long way, especially when building professional relationships.

Ned said she’s also learned from Papillion’s approach to work, such as when Ned’s company held a back-to-school campaign allowing for more work flexibility as parents adjusted to new school drop-off routines.

“We tried to make it as easy as possible,” she said.

Kendrick Hering, 24, has been patching together temporary gigs in landscaping and fixing up rental properties while he tries to launch his own business as a digital artist. His dad, Doug Hering, wants him to apply for more steady work.

Kendrick lives at home in Colorado Springs, Colo., and pays rent to his parents. He has been applying for more full- and part-time work for months, but with no luck. He also doubts full-time work would come with the job security and benefits that would make all the hustling he’s doing now worth it.

“To actually even find out about a job that I’m probably, just statistically speaking, not going to get, I have to do an exorbitant amount of research,” Kendrick said.

Doug Hering, a 63-year-old financial planner, has recommended his son apply to several jobs each day. He also has suggested he make business cards and perhaps enlist a life or business coach.

“You can’t sit back and do some digital advertising and hope that the floodgates will open,” said Doug, who took Kendrick to a networking event this month.

Lisbeth Darsh, a 57-year-old marketer based in Seattle, said her kids often encourage her to vie for promotions, so that her pay and title reflect her expertise. Her son, Justas Rodarte, 26, said his mum’s skills in writing to engage an audience are hard to match and she is better than he is at social media.

“My son is good at reminding me that there’s great value in what I do, and I owe it to myself to get that value,” Darsh said.

She’s not alone in taking advice from younger generations. About three-quarters of nearly 7,000 workers surveyed worldwide this summer said 20-something co-workers had influenced their attitudes toward issues such as work-life boundaries, fair pay and self-advocacy, according to Edelman, the public-relations firm that conducted the survey.

In the past, employers haven’t fully recognised Darsh’s skills, her son said, but this summer she won a promotion to become a director.

Now, his mum has a position that “fits her skills really well,” said Rodarte, who is pursuing a Ph.D. in immunology. “It’s the sort of thing that I wish I’ll be able to achieve.”

From Scotch whisky and luxury retreats to fashion collaborations and world-class hospitality, Ross Blainey has spent years shaping high-end experiences around one idea: modern luxury is no longer just about what you own.

It is about access, connection and moments money alone cannot buy.

As Citizen Kanebridge continues to grow as one of Australia’s most sought-after private members’ clubs, Blainey, the club’s new Head of Membership, says the future lies in creating experiences members cannot find anywhere else.

“The ultimate memorable experiences are the money can’t buy moments,” Blainey said.

“The things that you can’t just put together anytime or any place. They make up something that is greater than the sum of its parts.”

On June 4, Blainey will bring that philosophy to life when he hosts an exclusive whisky evening for Citizen Kanebridge members at Sydney’s Royal Automobile Club of Australia.

Titled A Journey Through Whisky, the intimate event will see Blainey guide members through a curated selection of rare and unreleased whiskies drawn from his personal archive, alongside stories gathered across years working at the highest levels of the Scotch whisky world.

The evening will also include reflections on Blainey’s induction as a Keeper of the Quaich at Blair Castle in Scotland last year, one of the whisky industry’s rarest global honours.

A career built around experience

Before joining Citizen Kanebridge, Blainey built a career spanning luxury hospitality, Scotch whisky, premium lifestyle brands and experiential events.

But he says one industry above all others shaped the way he thinks about people and community: Scotch whisky.

“At its core, at its heart and throughout its whole history, Scotch has been about sharing, enjoyment, telling stories, meeting people and generally having a good time,” he said.

“Whisky can be that shared moment of laughter, and it can also be a shared moment of just slowing down, taking stock and contemplating. These are so key to building community.”

Blainey’s deep involvement in the whisky world culminated in 2025 when he was inducted as a Keeper of the Quaich at Blair Castle, a recognition is reserved for a select group of individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to Scotch whisky internationally.

“I was inducted last year, 2025, an incredible honour,” he said.

“There were a couple of teary-eyed moments as I stood in Blair Castle, on historic ground, realising that this was a moment I would remember forever.”

The next chapter for Citizen Kanebridge

Looking ahead, Blainey says Citizen Kanebridge will continue to focus on highly curated experiences, exclusive access, and bringing together like-minded members from Australia’s property, finance, and investment sectors.

“Our baseline of Car of the Year is already one of the most impressive events on the social calendar of Australia,” he said.

“My job is to find a way of raising the bar, taking things to the absolute top level for access, experiences and events.”

Blainey said the long-term goal was not simply to create another networking group or luxury club, but to build a community centred around meaningful relationships and unforgettable experiences.

“We provide the access, the money can’t buy memories, and we will be making those happen regularly,” he said.

“If we start with how amazing Car of the Year is and the only way is up, we are going to have some mind-blowing moments for our members.”

Hospitality at its absolute best

Another major influence on Blainey’s thinking came through his connection with world-famous New York restaurant Eleven Madison Park, once named the best restaurant in the world.

He says two concepts from the restaurant’s owners still shape the way he approaches luxury experiences today: “enlightened hospitality” and “unreasonable hospitality”.

“Enlightened hospitality is a way of doing business that looks at not just the product of what you serve, but how it makes people feel,” Blainey said.

“Unreasonable hospitality is more about striving for the absolute best all the time. If you’re going to do something, do it to an unreasonable level that blows everything else out of the water.”

It is a philosophy, he says, which aligns closely with where Citizen Kanebridge is heading next.

“That’s what we’re doing here with CK, taking members’ experiences to another level,” he said.

Fashion, whisky and creative collaborations

Blainey’s career has also included working with Glenfiddich as a Creative Collaborations Lead, where his role centred on bringing luxury experiences and partnerships to life through designers, chefs, artists and bartenders.

Among the projects were runway collaborations with leading Australian fashion designers, with pieces from the partnerships now housed inside Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum.

“My job was to find a creative way of bringing the brand to life,” he said.

“How do we make something that none of us could make on our own? Searching for the things that will resonate with people.”

What luxury consumers want now

Beyond whisky and events, Blainey also played a key role in building Blackbird Byron, the boutique Byron Bay hinterland retreat later recognised in Tatler’s Top 101 Hotels list.

The property, known for its dramatic views, minimalist architecture, and secluded atmosphere, helped shape his understanding of how luxury consumers are changing.

“I think I learned that people looking for luxury in hotels want memorable moments, considered design and the ability to get away from the hustle and bustle of modern life,” he said.

“To feel at home without being at home is important.”

More broadly, he believes today’s luxury consumers are increasingly driven by authenticity and emotional connection.

“For luxury consumers overall, I think it comes down to craft, story and connection,” he said.

“The product itself has to be impeccable, the story behind it builds your reason for looking at it, and then you need to make a genuine connection with people.”

Interested in becoming a member of Citizen Kanebridge? You can contact Ross here.