A mother walking in on her adult daughter during an intimate moment was embarrassing enough.But what happened after the 30-year-old daughter asked for a little privacy sparked an unexpected family feud.The dispute eventually made its way to The View, where the co-hosts had very different opinions about boundaries between parents and their grown children.One person reacted, “A quick call to say you’re on your way hurts nobody and is basic manners. Boundaries are important!”A 30-year-old woman’s request for privacy sparked an unexpected response from her 69-year-old motherSergey Romanenko/Pexels (not the actual photo)The family dispute first came to public attention through Slate magazine’s Care and Feeding parenting advice column, in a September 19 installment written by Michelle Herman.An anonymous woman explained that her 69-year-old mother had been able to enter her apartment freely for nearly seven years.However, things took an uncomfortable turn when she arrived without warning and “walked in on [the woman] in the middle of adult activities with [her] partner, who was visiting.”Kindel Media/Pexels (not the actual photo)The daughter subsequently told her mother she could no longer enter the apartment without an invitation or advance notice.Rather than accepting the new arrangement without objection, her mother introduced two rules of her own.She announced that she would no longer wash any of the daughter’s partner’s clothes, despite having offered to handle her daughter’s laundry years earlier.theviewShe also insisted that her daughter could not bring anyone into her house without an explicit invitation.The latter rule apparently came after the daughter let her partner enter her mother’s home for a hug, something the couple had previously done before heading to work.Reacting to her mother’s new rules, the woman wrote, “She has set two counter-boundaries that I, my partner, and a few other trusted friends believe are manipulation tactics to get me to cave.”After losing unrestricted access to her daughter’s apartment, the mother retaliated with two unexpected rulesbokodi/magnific (not the actual photo)The disagreement became a Hot Topics discussion on ABC’s The View on Thursday, September 24, with Joy Behar introducing the dispute to the audience.Sunny Hostin drew on her own relationship with her mother, who had lived with her family for two decades and helped raise her children.Now living about five minutes away, her mother “comes over whenever she wants,” an arrangement Hostin said she welcomes, adding, “I want her there. I love my mom.”theviewBehar pushed back on the idea that wanting advance notice necessarily meant the woman had a distant relationship with her mother.“Why do you assume this girl doesn’t love her mom?” she asked.To this, Sara Haines responded, “I think when you’re setting boundaries, families often misunderstand.”“They hear I’m not close with you. I don’t love you. To have an intimate relationship doesn’t mean unlimited access to you.”Wavebreak Media/magnific (not the actual photo)Haines also shared an experience with her own family, saying her therapist had once advised her to “move the metaphorical fence away from your house.”She explained, “When you let people in too deeply, sometimes the wounds are greater. When you’re allowed to decide where they enter, that’s a healthier relationship.”Guest co-host Lisa Ling offered a different perspective based on her experience with her children when they were young.The View co-hosts disagreed over whether parents should have unrestricted access to their adult children’s homestheviewShe recalled that her mother and mother-in-law were at her house “every single day” and, while she appreciated their help, “they also told us what to do and what we were doing wrong every single day.”At one point, Ling said her husband asked whether they should tell the grandmothers “not to come over every day” and set some boundaries.But Ling ultimately thought, “It’s not going to be forever.” After her mother-in-law passed away, she said, “What I would do to have her barge in.”cottonbro studio/Pexels (not the actual photo)Similarly, Alyssa Farah Griffin said, “I have an open door policy with family, just let me know you’re coming is sort of the thing. So don’t, like, surprise me, show up, and say I’m staying with us. But you’re always welcome if you let me know in advance…”In her response to the anonymous woman, author Herman suggested that the mother and daughter had become too dependent on their existing arrangement and needed to rethink how they related to each other as adults.The columnist acknowledged that the mother should not have been entering her daughter’s apartment uninvited, regardless of whether she had previously been allowed to do so.The disagreement highlights a wider issue surrounding family boundaries that can sometimes lead to estrangementcottonbro studio/Pexels (not the actual photo)However, she also pointed out that the daughter had accepted the arrangement for seven years, along with her mother’s help with everyday chores.Her advice was to stop debating whether the mother’s new rules were manipulative and instead accept them, continue doing her own laundry, and have an open conversation about their relationship.She also suggested temporarily reconsidering overnight visits to her mother’s home while the two worked out their expectations.The situation also touches on a challenge that can arise when parents and their grown children struggle to adjust to changing responsibilities.Research suggests that ongoing family conflict can, in some cases, lead to estrangement.A national survey conducted by Cornell sociologist Karl Pillemer found that 27% of American adults reported being estranged from at least one family member.However, the woman did not indicate in her letter that she and her mother had stopped talking altogether.“That’s just common courtesy you don’t just walk in someone’s house. I don’t care who it is!” fumed one netizen