In my case I was born into the belief system of my parents, but the choice for me was to follow or reject it. I chose the latter. What bothered my parents was the fact that I rejected their belief system, but did not replace it with another, I think this would have been easier for them to accept.
My Father once asked me how I can believe in nothing, I told him that its not a case of believing in nothing, its a case of believing that anything is possible, without the need to qualify and quantify everything. Therefore there is no longer anything to defend, nothing to defend = peace.