Structuring multiple sites with shared content

Am I going mad? Ok, so I am a newbie but what I think would be logical or make sense, isn't??? Here's what I'm trying to do:

• I have multiple communication sites all connected to a hub communication site.
• I don't have Site Collection / Cross-site Collection Publishing activated - maybe this is my first problem??
• I have created column views (from list lookup) on the main hub.

There is no way to re-use lists from a hub site (used as a lookup in column views) on the child hubs - to be honest I kind of expected utilising hubs was going to aid this type of content sharing, but hasn't). I get there are some workarounds where I can pull in the existing list and upload it to another site etc, however then it is stand alone - I would then need to maintain multiple lists - which I'm not prepared to do.  I also use the column view to show page properties on training pages.

I then sat back and thought, am I better to structure the hub site with all pertinent lists and site pages and then use links to launch to these from child hubs - the thing I don't like about this though is I am then unable to add the Document Library web part as this shows content for a single site. 

Any thoughts, suggestions, commiserations would be appreciated!