When the cost of living and raising a family is already crushing, it’s hard to see what our kids are getting out of Valentine’s Day.Krystyna Cherkashyna/Getty Images
She remembers the flamingo. When my daughter asked what would happen on Feb. 14, she didn’t mention kindness, love or connection – not even my half-baked attempt last year at heart-shaped waffles.
The thing that had stuck with her was a sequined stuffed flamingo waiting on her chair at breakfast.
“Will there be another flamingo?” she asked.
The flamingo was a last-minute panic purchase at the drugstore, after a mom friend had described her Valentine’s Day rituals for her kids: fluffy slippers, pink balloons, thoughtful gifts and chocolates scattered just so on the dining table. My only plan had been the waffles.
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As with most things on social media, the comparison trap is an easy one to fall into. Valentine’s baskets – yes, that’s a thing – overflow with toys, and clothes, books and candy are arranged to perfection. I was spiralling after one such post, where a mom explained how she goes all out for the big day, so much so that her kids receive their special baskets on Feb. 1 so they can “enjoy the fun” and “soak it all in.”
This year, I promised myself not to get sucked in to comparison city. If it’s just more stuff, what exactly is the point of Valentine’s Day for kids? When the cost of living – and the cost of raising a family – is already crushing, it’s hard to see what our kids are getting out of this. According to a 2025 RBC poll, 60 per cent of Canadian families say their budgets have never felt more stretched. The report pointed to how quickly all of the “extras” of having kids can add up.
Gone are the days of simple homemade cards cut out of colourful craft paper. Last year, my kid came home with a literal garbage bag full of Valentine’s Day debris: snap bracelets, glow sticks, dollar-store chocolate, heart-shaped erasers and a handful of inexplicable squishy animals. Did any of these things teach her about love?
Valentine’s Day has started to feel less like a lesson in kindness or friendship and more like a shallow, performative exchange of stuff – one that can leave some kids feeling left out. In recent years, some elementary schools in Ontario cancelled Valentine’s exchanges during school hours in an effort to make things more inclusive.
I can see the rationale. My own Valentine’s trauma in the third grade remains vivid, when “secret admirer” cards were handed out in class from the boys. The cool girls had stacks on their desks, while mine stayed empty – until my teacher quietly wrote one for me. Everyone saw, which was way worse.
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Today, school rituals on Feb. 14 may look different, but the dynamics of comparison and exclusion are familiar. “I think celebrating Valentine’s Day is an absolute horror,” said Jean Clinton, a child psychiatrist and clinical professor of psychiatry and behavioural neurosciences at McMaster University.
“Love, belonging, and relationship-building should be happening every day,” she said. “In many ways, the entire moral purpose of school is to create these conditions for kids to thrive.”
For that to happen, Dr. Clinton said children need to feel “safe, significant, and secure” at school, but Valentine’s exchanges can quietly undermine that. “If kids are fretting – and we know some are right now, as we speak – about what they’re going to get or not get from classmates on this one day, then they’re not learning.”
There’s also the problem of teaching kids to conflate love with the receiving of material things, Dr. Clinton said, “which can also turn into a completely unnecessary opportunity for parents to show off – not something that actually serves children.”
And of course, there’s the waste of it all. Toronto-based sustainability expert and author Puneeta Chhitwal-Varma said Valentine’s Day can be a perfect storm for parents. We want to do what other parents are doing for their kids, and we’re also deeply anxious about the world they’re inheriting.
“By the weekend, let’s be honest, all of this stuff is in the trash,” she said, adding that it joins the five million tonnes of plastic waste Canadians throw out every year. Over time, she explained, those plastic knickknacks break down and eventually enter our soil, our water and eventually, our bodies.
With her own children, Chhitwal-Varma focuses on connection for Valentine’s, both with each other and with the planet. When her kids were younger, they used to make cards for their classmates and tuck in special sticks or pinecones that they had found together as a family. “This is one of those things that is actually very much within our parental control,” Chhitwal-Varma said, stressing that parents can break norms that no longer serve us. “We can just decide today, right now, to make less trash this Valentine’s Day.”
My new ritual won’t involve an elaborate basket or any sequined flamingos. Instead of me doing the work alone, I’ll get my kids into the place where we love to be together: the kitchen.
We’ll bake and decorate heart-shaped cookies for each child in their classes. Yes, it’s one more thing on my overflowing mental list – and one I can’t be sure to execute to Instagram perfection.
But I’m hoping my kids absorb the quieter lesson: that love lives in the care we take, not the performance we put on.
