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While I don't necessarily agree with your parents, I'm that type. If some day my son or daughter told me he or she wanted to enlist, I'd hit the roof. I'd do everything short of duct taping his or her room shut in order to prevent their military service. Why? PTSD. The military still doesn't know how to program and then deprogram soldiers. They're pretty good at creating order-following honor-loving machines, but there's nothing in boot camp that could possibly prepare you for seeing one of you best friends blown to pieces in front of you by an IED that was built by farmers turned militants. There's nothing that can prepare you for the amount of times people you've never met will try their best to kill you by whatever means are possible. And there's nothing that can remove those burdens from you when you come back from deployment. You might get lucky and get stationed in Germany or a more friendly Middle Eastern country like the UAE, but considering we're ramping up troop deployment in Afghanistan, there's a reasonable chance you'll be in the thick of it.
I'm not in the military. I just have a lot of military friends and I'm a good listener. Please, be warned that this is a very, very serious decision. You will probably be asked to kill, and you could die. You may see people you come to think of as family die. And there's no guarantee that you'll be fighting for anything laudable like freedom or peace. You may just be defending oil interests or posturing with your Chinese or Russian equivalent.
/end pseudo-parental rant.
Your family cares for you and they likely will continue to disagree with your decision. If you've given an honest effort at explaining why you want to enlist and they still aren't going to support you, you've done all you can. They're scared to death and they'll have to deal with that. The best you can do is be a good kid between now and when you ship out. Keep up your grades and all that jazz. It might shoot some holes in their "irresponsible" argument.
Best of luck.
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