Perhaps he should have put the textures in a central container and have the widgets use a reference to the texture item?

I would think that adding textures as a child of the widgets would imply that he WANTED the textures copying. I wouldn't put child items into an object unless I wanted them copying too, as their lifetime is tied up with their parent object. The problem is not containers - it is more with his design and him wanting to control the lifetimes of child textures.