The accompanying spouse is employment-authorized incident to E-2 status and may work in the business or elsewhere. Children under 21 may study but not work, and they lose derivative status at 21. E-2 itself leads to no green card.
Two working adults, one time-limited status for the children
Hypothetical example: the couple have a daughter of fourteen and a son of seventeen. The spouse who is not the principal applicant may run guest relations, keep the books or take an unrelated job, because E-2 spouse employment authorization is incident to status and does not depend on the enterprise. The children can enrol in a Vermont school and later a college in E-2 dependent status, but they cannot take a summer job with the business, and each will fall out of derivative status at 21 regardless of the parents' renewals.
For the seventeen-year-old that is under four years away, and the family should think now about what he will do after: return to Québec, obtain a student status of his own, or something else. E-2 has no direct path to permanent residence, so a family whose real objective is settling permanently should ask early whether EB-5, an employer-based immigrant petition or another route belongs in the plan alongside the management business.