My mother never tried to stop me, but I've had some quite unpleasant with my girlfriend's step dad. He tells me all the time that it's a "waste of time" and that I "just do the same thing over and over again." Keep in mind he's referring to all puzzles (he's seen me do a variety of puzzles such as 2x2-5x5, magic, mega/pyraminx, etc), and methods (speedsolve, bld, step bld solves (like in Fridrich doing a pair bld, etc)). I'm not sure why he's so cranky about it, to be honest. He tells me I need to find a better way to "use my time." I explain to him that me playing with a cube is no different than him playing guitar and bass, and he tries to say how it doesn't "eat up all of his time." I tell him that it doesn't eat up all my time, but I choose to do it. He calls it my "heroin." He doesn't understand the passion I have for it, nor will he (even though he's in a band and before he got this job working evenings he practiced at minimum weekly and he's often found strumming around). I think he has some sort of jealousy issue out of it (that sounds really arrogant, but I don't mean it like that), and seeing me do them often doesn't help the issue. It probably doesn't help that whenever I'm at my girlfriend's parents' place, I'm often bored and I'm not real big on a lot of small chatter (some is okay but it just seems to get repetitive). So I'll cube or get on a laptop while I'm there and I guess sometimes they feel like I don't want to be there because of it.
Chris has a very strong argument though. If what is important (school, chores, job, etc) isn't slacking because of your cubing habits, then how can the passion be so negative? Remember that when you get into these "arguments" with your parents, as soon as you (or your parents) get heated, the argument is pretty much useless at that point, so try extra hard to stay calm during this particular one.
I've got a handful of friends who tease me that I often ignore them for the cube (sometimes they joke about banning my cube while we hang out, because I often get too involved into the cube and say "Huh?" too many times), but it's never a negative thing. My closest friends are definitely my biggest supporters in it, even those who tell me "Hey, no cube tonight." I can understand their point though, I go hang out with them and I might as well not if I ignore them for my cube
