Holidays
STFU Parents: Heart-Shaped Love From Parents On Facebook This Valentine’s Day
Valentine’s Day is upon us, and for this year’s holiday column, I thought I’d stray from my usual analysis of “A Mother’s Love” (volumes one, two, and three!). Sure, it’s still totally weird the way parents occasionally describe their relationship to their son or daughter, but we can focus on that subject again another time. I promise.
Instead, today I wanted to take a more simplistic view of the holiday that famously and commercially celebrates love. Love comes in many forms, but the geometric symbol most representative of it is a heart — and oh, how parents are enraptured by this shape once they have a baby. Not that people don’t already discover heart shapes in everyday things, but for parents, discovering a heart shape as it relates to their child amounts to absolute elation. Perhaps their baby accidentally left a heart-shaped imprint on a steamed up window? Or a teeny tiny confetti heart made its way into a diaper filled with diarrhea? Or the sign of true love came in the form of a heart-shaped placenta resembling shark meat when the baby was born? Whatever the discovery, parents are always overjoyed by the extra “love” that surrounds them and their baby when a heart enters the picture.
So in honor of the holiday and its love-filled sentiments, let’s check out some examples of various heart-shaped tokens of affection. This Valentine’s Day, I can’t think of anyone I’d rather curl up on the couch with than random parents on Facebook.
