Do You Have an "Unpopular Decision" That Makes You a Minority?

Hubby is a SAHD and I work (without regrets - I am very proud of my ability to support my family financially, and I am proud of the message it sends to my sons about women). My husband and I are each other's best friends - we love to spend time together - we have lunch together every single day.

Llol. I'm an atheist. With 5 kids. That are homeschooled. Classically.

I'm a minority within a minority within a minority within a minority.

Well, I waited until marriage to have sex. So did my husband. His decision for that was WAY more unpopular then mine. We don't vaccinate, that's not very popular. We plan to homeschool. There are quite a few more, but in my small group of friends they aren't unpopular decisions. It's more outside that circle, that people don't necessarily agree with them.

Our unpopular choice is to use common sense and be practical. That seems to be a detriment to more people than I realized!!!

i don't let my kids watch sponge bob and i don't have any tattoos.

I believe in spanking.

No TV or video games during the week. Zero.

My kid eats veggies. He never knew it wasn't an option to refuse them. He also eats the crust on his sandwhiches.

I get up early, even in the summer, like 5 am or even 4 am if I have alot to do. I don't sleep in unless I have just given birth. I have friends who get up at 9 or 10 or later in the morning and make fun of me (I have no idea why). By that time I have worked in my garden, worked out for an hour or more, worked on my Bible study and devotions, housework and enjoyed a cup of coffe on my porch before my kid/the sun is up. That is O. discipline in my life I am proud of.

We are like you - we live WAY below our means.

I'm not an a$$ kisser.

We all make choices others may not agree with. I let my kids fuss and learn to self sooth, I gave them formula, I forward faced my car seats when they turned O.. There are many out there that would call me a bad mom, but my kids are great, healthy, happy, and well adjusted. I support a woman's right to choose, I think marriage should be for all consenting adults, I don't believe in god and teach my children about why I don't. (you would be amazed at the hate I get for not raising my children christian, especially for this supposedly being a land of religious freedom). I learned a long time ago that we will never please everyone, so we should just focus on our family, and live the best way we know how.

Oh, my. SO many. Here's a few:
no alcohol, ever
no sex outside of marriage
We too do not drive new cars or buy fancy clothes or designer stuff or anything else that's unnecessarily expensive.
homeschool
SAHM
our kids get jobs at 16
We belong to an unpopular religion.
We don't give expensive gifts.
Our daughter's wedding reception had no caterers - we bought the food at Costco and served it ourselves.
We tithe 10% to our church.
no swearing
no smoking

I punish my kids when they misbehave. I believe abortion is wrong in all situations. When people ask how many kids I have I count all my kids even those that are not living. They are all mine. I am very Catholic and believe those that aren't shouldn't call themselves Catholic at all. I homeschool all my children and some are in high school. That counts for double. I have six kids, four living. We don't make a great amount of money so we live in a small house with only O. bathroom. I must admit I wish we had two. I require that my kids attend Mass every Sunday even when they stay with cousins. Lastly, I am not ever popular with my kids when I serve peas.

I have no affiliated religion. Man do I get ripped about that decision frequently.

I'm a liberal living in the most conservative county in our state. I'm also college-educated, which isn't popular here, either.

We bottlefed by choice.

We don't belong to any religion.

We have a child with severe ADHD and he's on medication. Not sure there's a bigger lightning rod than that O..

We have a child who hates eating and are on doctor's orders to give him high-fat foods. On top of that, he has food anxiety and severe picky eating. We seek out the worst possible fast-food options to help our son get on track.

DS doesn't watch tv or play video games. I work because I want to and love to and BECAUSE I want my son to know that women can and should be full members of society. I am an atheist. I support legalization of drugs. I am pro choice. Happily for me - my mom and DH believe the same things (DH is a little more of an agnostic than atheist) but is also a staunch feminist. I bottle fed by choice - so that DH and I could share the bonding with DS equally (and share the night time feedings as well). I do not do time outs or hit my kid - I talk to him.

My cell phone doesn't even have a camera. No texting. It's a 2 yr old phone and works great. I don't do FB. I seem to be out of the ordinary amongst my friends. We are like you, Denise, in the fact that we do things very simply and w/o all the 'flashy gadgets.' We don't have cable. We are the odd-balls it seems.

Deciding to have O. child. SO F'ING UNPOPULAR!

* Not allowing my teen DD to have a cell phone until she can pay for it herself

* Allowing my teen DD to do Independant Study for her High School years - her request

* Not having cable TV

* Not have a Facebook/MySpace account (even though everyone including my mom seems to have O.!!!)

not using punishment with my kids.
allowing them to crawl in bed with us when they need to.
not giving my kids sugary sweets.
giving my toddlers whole milk instead of reduced fat.
not apologizing for my kids acting like kids.

We live below our means too. We did not buy the most house we could afford on paper, and we are not looking to upgrade. We pay off our credit card in full every month. We own O. vehicle, DH and I share.

I allow my kids to go barefoot at the playground if they want to, but they don't really want to like when they were younger.

I have no interest in facebook, zero, zip, nada.

We occasionally eat fast food.

I do not ever force my kids to eat anything, though I do serve them a variety of different foods. I encourage to try things, but will not force.

I allow my kids to keep all of their Halloween candy.

We don't allow screen time after dinner on school nights. We have school night lights out bed time, even still for our almost 12 year old. It seems many of her peers do not have "bed times" and can stay up as late as they want.

My kids will occasionally ask a restaurant server what kind of beverages they offer. Often they will ramble off milk, chocolate milk, each and every kind of juice and lemonade and just pause as if the soda choices need to be kept secret. I guess a lot of parents don't want their kids to hear all of the options, as if I will hate them if they reveal the soda choices. I find that humorous. We drink milk with meals at home, but I will let my kids make their own choice on special occasions we go out to eat.

I would rather go to Disney than any other vacation destination, much to DH's dismay. We do compromise on that O..

Not being a party girl in college--made for some pretty lonely Fri nites, but my grades were superb!

We do not do the video game thing (or at least we have not yet, lol...) My 5 year is often teased b/c he doesn't know what a DS is or a Wii or Playstation.

We want our kids to be kids... meaning go outside and play and burn off the energy that kids have. We even bought a cabin in hopes of helping our children to love the outdoors and learn to fish and canoe and all that fun stuff. Not sure what will happen... but this is our hopes!

I converted to Islam!!!! Ewww beat that! I did notice many moms put that they belong to minority religions but no O. posted what they are.....interesting. Goes right along with the question I guess!

Um, where do I start? LOL
We don't use any kind of birth control, but instead accept children as a gift from God.
We don't vaccinate.
We homeschool.
Our children don't date. We will practice courtship instead.
We don't have TV.
I believe in submitting to my husband as his helpmeet, although it is an area I struggle with! He is a really good man, which makes it easier for me.
I drive a 15 passenger van! Ha!
We don't do debt, other than the mortgage, but we are trying to get that paid off.
Hmmm I'm sure there is more... ;)

no dating until age 16 for our kids.....man, is that a hard O. to stick with in today's world!

A lot of choices I've made or things I've done put me in the minority. I just keep them mostly secret... ;-)

~I'm a Minority Conservative Christian Tea Partier living in Obamaland

~Had 1st child when I was 17 but refused to go on welfare even though friends thought I should go get *free* money

~I was a single mom making minimum wage & was able to build my 1st house by 22 all because I worked very hard & saved every penny, even when my friends thought I was nuts for not going clubbing & buying stuff

~I am a strict disciplinarian & pro spanking

~believe in Parental rights over child rights

~Can admit that I enjoy time away from kids & husband

~made a huge financial sacrifice to put our 3 kids in private christian school

~We are debt free, Husband can retire much earlier than standard retirement age & live very comfortably off our investments ALL because we live below our means & don't need the latest and greatest of *stuff*

No video games in my house. I've been looked at like I'm an alien.
Live within your financial means.
No texting.

Yeah id say among my friends my decisions are very unlike theirs. For example, vegetarianism, co sleeping, extended breastfeeding, not spanking....and... like you live without debt. Although i never considered it before your post, now i do.

Im always getting offhanded comments about how we dont have a mortgage or car note to worry about......well, we tried very hard to make that possible. yes and i get flak for not eating meat, and the other things too..

i try to roll with the punches, i have a pretty strong voice when it comes to my decisions.

my faith, also we do the same as you financial wise.

We coslept with both of our babies.

We homeschool our kids. Not for religious reasons (we are secular homeschoolers) but for many other different reasons too numerous to post here. And we love it!

We were engaged and got married before we finished college.

I had my first baby at 21 years old and my second baby at 23.

We are vegetarian, which still confuses my parents to this very day. :-)

I think the decision that we got the most negative feedback on is when I worked for a few years while my husband stayed at home with the kids. We were both fine with it and I was happy that the kids were able to spend all day with their father (and that he was willing to do it), but it seemed like lots of people judged my husband negatively for it.

I dont facebook. I just have no need or desire to, and yet allmost daily a friend or family member grumbles at me that if I had facebook they wouldnt have had to call or text me, I could have just seen whatever it was on facebook.

I am an atheist who practices somewhat-extended breastfeeding, and I like to have a few drinks on friday afternoons while the kids are napping and then we have the most fun dance parties afterwards! I'm a pretty hilarious and playful mama when i've had a couple of drinks in me :) We also don't have cable, drive old cars (no car payments), I do not have a 4 year college degree and honestly have absolutely NO desire to ever finish school (i hate school) and I feel like being a stay at home mom is all the fulfillment I want and need right now. I also have never had any problem with my kids getting dirty-- my 10 month old was leaping out of my arms to chase her brother around (by crawling) in the dirt today and I got so many icky looks and comments from the other moms present about how dirty she was getting. Whatever! She was having the time of her life cruising around :)

We live within our means even when it means doing without (like you, Denise, we either pay cash for our cars or get the old O. fixed). No giant flat screen tvs or iphones for us!

The kids don't watch any tv and my husband and I watch maybe 2-3 hours of tv per week. I don't want to raise materialstic brats and I think tv contributes to that attitude (but its not the sole cause of it). I'm always surprized by how offended people are by that choice. I don't think that tv is pure evil and I don't care if other people let their kids watch tv -its just not for us, but people avt like we are abusing our kids by not letting them watch tv and they are 4 months and 19 months old!

Not so much for us. We have lots of friends with lots of different views, religions, child-rearing skills, financial positions, etc. We all try to be supportive of each other's deeply held beliefs. Did realize there were so many people out there who felt like they were up against the world. Wishing you all more supportive friends/family and peace of mind with your decisions.

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Ditto Dawn B. about probably not the minority, but it feels like it since others seem to crow so much. Some of them are based on choices, some are based on the way things happened.

- we worked 5 jobs (at once) between us for 5 years, and went without mannnnnnny things, to become debt free, including cars, house, etc
- we live in a modest Cape Cod home that's always under repair, on a lot that's 5x the size of our house (as opposed to a pristine McMansion on a tiny lot)
- I was 39-1/2 when our first child was born (after 5 miscarriages) (as opposed to most women who start their families much earlier)
- we've been 'crunchy' long before it was trendy
- we choose to grow our family thru adoption, even though we could choose to get pregnant again
- we've done several fun things throughout the year (baseball games, tours, events) as opposed to vacation, long before 'staycation' became trendy
- I work part time nights/weekends to stay home with our child(ren) during the day
- we emphasize walking the dogs after dinner, over eating together as a family
- we're not enrolling our 3yo son in pre-school this fall, while all of his friends are going, because we think kids already have plenty of school

Homeschooling . . .

parenting "by the book" I try to do what is recommended and suggested. Most of my family thinks that I'm the crazy O..

My kids do not have a Wii (...yet because I do want to get O. so we can use it as a family), an Xbox, a Playstation, PSP, cell phones, the latest DS Games, DSL 3-D, etc, TV in their room, Ipad, Ipod and just got their own email accounts this past year. My son has a Nintendo DS that he chose as his birthday gift and I have O. that has not left their possession in several weeks. Hmm, wonder where it is right now? The van I drive is from 2000 when we first got it new and I see no reason to buy a new O., though I really would not mind if we had O. that could put down the rear windows. I got flack from O. of my daughter's friends because our stuff is "old" and I should get a new car because she says so.
Oh, and I recently got attitude from someone that I am was watching the kids and not letting them be with their friends. I check on my kids and jsut because they are 12 does not mean they should be outside all day long without being checked on to see what is up.

Im with nikki g!

We, like you, have chosen to live within our means...we are a CASH ONLY family...with no credit cards - not even an "emergency" O....the only debt we carry is the mortgage...and I'm not sure we will ever really pay it off - unless our wonderful elected officials take that tax write off from us....

Any way - I had a few friends blast or give me grief for being a cash only family...but we've stuck to our guns and are living nicely - not keeping up with the Jones' - are not having the problems that many are having...being underwater in their mortgage...credit card debt - where they are borrowing from Peter to pay Paul....

I agree with your friend about not having her son labeled...he has a better chance of succeeding in life because he doesn't have it!

I/we also decided that children were not for us & virtually EVERYone always asks "WHY don't you have children!!???" as if that's the only thing to do. We enjoy our lives to ourselves & honestly, we both agreed that only about 10% the way we feel in really wanting to have children & the other 90% of the way we feel is that we don't. We enjoy being by ourselves at home, being able to just up & go whenever & wherever we want...not having to worry about finding a last min babysitter or if the kids get sick, they hafta miss school & we hafta miss work b/c either taking care of the sick kids and/or us getting sick b/c the kids were sick b/c someone didn't keep their kid home from school when they were sick, therefore making everyone else get sick, or in turn, we get sick b/c an adult didn't stay home from wk & then making everyone in the office sick & we bring it home to the kids which then get sick & we still hafta miss wk & they miss school. We don't hafta worry about getting stressed out over a misbehaving kid while we're trying to shop which turns into a big hassle & not getting the shopping done or not being able to discipline our kids as we see fit when any other methods don't work...always in fear that someone's gonna take something out of context & call DHS for some reason. Always having to worry about where's the kids, what are they doing...always having to have extra money to spend on kids' needs & not having it to spend. Most ppl think we're being selfish not having kids...well I disagree. I think it'd be more selfish if we did have kids that we didn't really wanna have just to be like everyone else. Another couple of examples of not being "in the norm" & I don't know if this is the same thing you had in mind when asking this question but I've often been the 'bad guy' at work, school, etc simply b/c I didn't sit around all day & gossip about other people. In fact, I've actually gotten fired several times b/c I was deemed as not being a 'team player'! What it boiled down to was I chose not to join in making fun of someone that others thought was 'less' than they, these fellow co-workers went & told the boss I wasn't being cooperative & a bunch of hooie to get rid of me, well, it worked. The boss always took their side. I guess b/c I was the 'new person' & wasn't going to be manipulated by them. I've also been offered drugs & always turned it down. I've never done drugs, hardly drink & never smoked so, in that way, I'm "no fun" according to other people but that's okay. I'd rather spend my time & money on my needs & occasionally, something fun like a weekend getaway somewhere I've always wanted to go but I have no need for drugs, drinking or tobacco products so I just smile at them & say, "well that's fine, I don't need to be around people like you anyway..." then leave. I've always been thought of as the 'odd O.' in a crowd but as long as I don't wane from who I feel I am, that's all that matters. :)

I am a Christian that believes what the Bible says, nothing to add nothing to take away .......... it's not very" popular" nowdays even in Christian circles........oh well, Christ said in John 15-18 "If the world hates you, remember that it first hated me" . How is that for an "unpopular" choice?:)

I married my highschool sweetheart and he was my first *everything*