The Tooth Fairy is a magical creature that leaves children money while they are sleeping in exchange for a shed primary tooth. Along with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy is one of the most popular gift-giving figures in American children’s mythology. Unlike other figures of children’s lore, the Tooth Fairy can appear in many guises: as a child or adult, man or woman, animal or human, singular or many. Though there is some debate as to the origin of the Tooth Fairy, it was popularized in America after World War II and continues to inspire children’s literature and popular culture.
The Tooth Fairy is believed to have originated in America around the beginning of the twentieth century, but its relationship to the many international traditions involving the disposal of primary teeth (also called “deciduous,” “milk,” and “baby” teeth) is a matter of dispute. Many other cultures have customs celebrating the loss of these teeth as a rite of passage to adulthood or as part of a protection ritual. These traditions usually only involve the loss of the first tooth and some individual traditions from around the world include burning the tooth, placing it in salt, or throwing it onto a roof. The American Tooth Fairy tradition differentiates itself from these other global traditions by involving a direct exchange of tooth for monetary gift, by not requiring any special wish or incantation, and by its repetition every time a child loses a primary tooth.
The Tooth Fairy ritual requires only that the child place the primary tooth under a pillow (or occasionally inside a special small pocket on a pillow created for this purpose) before going to bed; upon waking she will find money left underneath the pillow. Adding a game-like element to this ritual, a child may try to stay awake to “catch” the Tooth Fairy at work, but, like Santa Claus, it is often understood that the Tooth Fairy will not visit until the child is asleep.
Because their rituals have many overlapping characteristics, some scholars have proposed that the tooth fairy directly originated from the European tradition of the Tooth Mouse. The Tooth Mouse, named “Ratoncito Pérez” in Latin and Hispanic cultures and “La Petite Souris” in France, is a mouse who leaves gifts in exchange for a child’s primary teeth left underneath a pillow. William Carter and Tad Tuleja, in particular, propose Madame d’Aulnoy’s “La Bonne Petite Souris” and its translated version “The Good Little Mouse” appearing in Andrew Lang’s The Red Fairy Book (1890) as a credible mechanism for the transference from Tooth Mouse to Tooth Fairy. Published at about the time some scholars suppose the Tooth Fairy to have originated, the story involves a fairy who disguises herself as a mouse and is responsible for a wicked king losing his teeth. However, since “La Bonne Petite Souris” does not involve a child losing a primary tooth, the relationship between this story and the traditions of the Tooth Mouse and Tooth Fairy is not certain.
Other possible origins and influences could include the Viking tradition of tann-fé, or tooth-fee, in which infants were given a gift when their first teeth emerged, a Venetian witch named Marantega who exchanges coins for lost teeth, and the Catholic saint of dentistry, Saint Apollonia. Popular culture images of fairies in stories and films such as The Wizard of Oz, Pinocchio, Peter Pan, and Cinderella may have shaped portrayals of the Tooth Fairy as she appeared in the first half of the twentieth century. Also, the European link between fairies and fairy gold probably played a role in developing the American practice of leaving coins in the tooth exchange.
The earliest known print mention of the Tooth Fairy is Esther Watkins Arnold’s Tooth Fairy: A Three-Act Playlet for Children (1927). Scholars believe that Arnold did not invent the character of the tooth fairy, but was drawing on a somewhat older domestic tradition without formal written songs and tales. This is assumed because some of the Tooth Fairy’s earliest appearances in print are brief references without further explanation. For instance, a 1929 educational publication entitled Our National Parks includes a short story in which a child jokes, “Perhaps the tooth fairy will follow me” after she pockets a rock her uncle had described as a glacier’s “tooth.” A 1936 article in The American Home magazine casually mentions the Tooth Fairy with the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus in this now popular triad of children’s icons. With the exception of Arnold’s “Playlet” and brief mentions in periodicals, fairy tales and children’s literature explicitly involving the Tooth Fairy are thought to be nonexistent before the middle of the century. In 1949, Lee Rogow detailed the Tooth Fairy ritual in Collier’s Weekly magazine with a short story about a child who intentionally loosens her tooth so that she would receive a dime from the Tooth Fairy. Her parents, initially reluctant to entertain notions of fantasy in their child’s mind, each give in and end up rewarding the child with two dimes.
Unlike Santa Claus, whose appearance is nearly always marked by certain recognizable features, the Tooth Fairy has a somewhat inconsistent appearance. In her survey of twenty-nine children’s books published between 1952 and 1989 mentioning a tooth fairy, Rosemary Wells noted that representations of the tooth fairy as a child, an animal, or as a man were not uncommon. However, there seems to be a default archetype because when children are prompted to come up with their own images of the Tooth Fairy, they often describe an adult woman with wings, holding a wand. In popular culture when men fulfill the role of the Tooth Fairy, it often seems humorous or unexpected, and when animals fulfill the role it is often because the children in the story are also portrayed as animals.
Though the Tooth Fairy is more often identifiable primarily through her office than her exact representation, why she wants the teeth and what she does with them has been a matter of creative interpretation. Several authors of children’s books have portrayed the Tooth Fairy using teeth as building material for castles and jewelry. Anita Feagles’s children’s book The Tooth Fairy (1962) combines many of these theories and shows a child-like tooth fairy who carefully sorts teeth into categories, makes them into necklaces, and uses them as tokens in party games. Feagles’s story also capitalizes on the irony that is occasionally part of Tooth Fairy lore by having the tooth fairy collect teeth because she has none of her own.
How much the Tooth Fairy is willing to give in exchange for a child’s precious primary teeth seems to depend on the health of the economy. Several scholars suggest that one reason for the boom in the Tooth Fairy’s popularity in the 1950s may have been the greater economic capabilities of middle-class parents to support the tradition. According to a 1983 study by Rosemary Wells, the average price of a tooth between 1900 and 1975 rose from twelve to eighty-five cents. Most recently, an annual Delta Dental poll, which claims to track with the S&P 500, measures the 2013 average tooth fairy gift at $2.42.
Besides monetary value for the child, the tradition of the Tooth Fairy is also thought to serve valuable functions for families in negotiating a time of transition in a child’s life. The Tooth Fairy can provide comfort to children anxious from losing what had seemed to be a permanent body part, likewise for parents who recognize that the loss of primary teeth signals children’s transitions to school and the first steps to independence. Children’s belief in the Tooth Fairy can be a solace or a sign that they have not yet fully grown. However, because belief figures prominently in the Tooth Fairy tradition, accusing someone of “still believing in the Tooth Fairy” has become cultural shorthand for severe naïveté.
Parents often use the Tooth Fairy’s visitation as an educational tool. Tooth Fairy money can provide an opportunity for parents to instill cultural values of economic responsibility. Additionally, children sometimes engage in letter writing to the tooth fairy, which can aid in the development of literacy. Dental practices and societies in America have also seized this tradition as an educational opportunity, using the icon of the Tooth Fairy to promote good dental hygiene as well as market dental products. Children’s books and articles in parents’ magazines encourage the link between Tooth Fairy rewards and dental health, often suggesting that the Tooth Fairy values healthy teeth over those with cavities.
Today, the Tooth Fairy is a staple in American popular culture. There are numerous films, books, toys, specialty pillows, and even video games that capitalize upon Tooth Fairy iconography. At the same time, this tradition is highly personal to each family, commemorating a child’s transition out of innocent childhood.
Sandra M. Leonard
See also European Sources; Fairylore; Santa Claus; Women in Folklore
Further Reading
Carter, William, Bernard Butterworth, Joseph Carter, and John Carter. 1987. Ethnodentistry and Dental Folklore. Overland Park, KS: Dental Folklore Books of Kansas City.
Clark, Cindy. 1995. Flights of Fancy, Leaps of Faith: Children’s Myths in Contemporary America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Delta Dental. 2014. “The Original Tooth Fairy Poll.” http://www.theoriginaltoothfairypoll.com/. Accessed February 25, 2014.
Feagles, Anita. 1962. The Tooth Fairy. Reading, MA: Young Scott Books.
Narváez, Peter, ed. 1997. The Good People: New Fairylore Essays. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.
Rogow, Lee. 1949. “The Tooth Fairy.” Collier’s Weekly, August 20, 26.
Wells, Rosemary. 1983. “Tracking the Tooth Fairy.” Cal Magazine 46, no. 12: 1–8; 47, no. 1: 18–26; 47, no. 2: 25–31.