![]() ![]() But for some parents, going to great lengths to celebrate the milestone loss creates expectations that may be difficult to meet in the future. The Tooth Fairy Poll indicates that in many families, the first tooth a child loses is a cause for special celebration and special remuneration the average payout for that tooth is $4.96. While the earliest written reference to the tooth fairy is from a children’s play of the same name in 1927, the character didn’t achieve ubiquity until the mid-20th century, assisted, according to folklorist Tad Tuleja, by a thriving economy, a renewed romanticization of childhood, and the popularity of good fairies in the media (such as Disney movies). ![]() Historians believe the American tooth fairy may have been inspired by this tradition, combined with European folklore about good fairies giving gifts or granting wishes. Various peoples from Asia to Central America have a practice of leaving a lost tooth as an offering for some kind of animal in exchange for a healthy new one. How did the tooth fairy tradition begin?Īlthough cultures around the world have traditions for marking a child’s lost tooth, the tooth fairy is a relatively recent and specifically American myth. And while Delta reports that the tooth fairy tradition is a source of joy in more than half the families surveyed, many parents say it’s also a source of stress - not just the cumulative financial investment but also the pressure to create magical childhood memories overnight, again and again. ![]() When I asked around for tooth-related anecdotes, almost everyone who responded was a woman. NPR’s Planet Money theorizes that the increase in tooth price over inflation is because when funds are more available, spending tends to increase disproportionately in the areas that people value most, such as creating treasured memories for one’s children.ĭelta doesn’t track which parent in two-parent households is most often responsible for tooth compensation, but it seems reasonable to assume that, like most of the mental work - noticing, remembering, planning - of parenting, this job is disproportionately handled by mothers. The results indicated that the tooth fairy leaves an average of $3.70 per tooth in the US, declining for the second year in a row after peaking above $4.50 in 2017.Īlthough the price of a tooth has risen faster than inflation since 1998, the average under-the-pillow payout is a fairly reliable indicator of the S&P 500, the index most financial experts use to track the health of the US economy and stock market. This year, the Original Tooth Fairy Poll, conducted by Kelton Global on behalf of Delta Dental, collected data from a nationally representative sample of 1,058. The first year of the poll recorded the average per-tooth compensation at $1.30. In 1998, Delta Dental, the largest dental insurer in the US, began conducting an annual nationwide poll to determine how much money children received from the tooth fairy. American parents put a lot of time, effort, and, of course, money into convincing children the Tooth Fairy is real. Lydia’s level of commitment is impressive, but not out of the ordinary. But for a few hours, Lydia was afraid a currency mix-up might give the game away. ![]() “We asked every vendor, shopkeeper, and hotel desk person at the place if they had even one of those gold coins,” Lydia recalls, “and the answer across the board was no.”įortunately, the loose tooth dangled until the family got home and the tooth fairy could run to the bank. Their family was staying on the resort it was after banking hours. But after a few years of this tradition, when her daughter got a loose tooth at Disneyland, Lydia panicked. That seemed like a touch of tooth fairy whimsy that wouldn’t be too much work. When Lydia’s daughter began losing her baby teeth, Lydia decided that instead of dollar bills, she’d leave gold dollar coins under her pillow - three coins per tooth. ![]()
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