Parents keep baby teeth for a mix of sentimental, cultural, and increasingly scientific reasons. For most families, a tiny tooth tucked into a box is simply a keepsake from a fleeting stage of childhood. But some parents are also banking on the idea that those teeth could have medical value down the road, thanks to stem cells found inside the dental pulp.
The Sentimental Pull
A baby tooth is one of the few physical markers of early childhood that doesn’t fade or get outgrown. Unlike a favorite onesie or a pair of shoes, a tooth is literally part of your child’s body. That biological connection makes it harder to throw away than other childhood objects. Research from the British Psychological Society found that parents, especially mothers, struggle to part with their children’s belongings because of their emotional meaning, often using delaying tactics to hold onto items as long as possible. There’s also a social dimension: many parents feel an unspoken expectation to protect and preserve their children’s identities, and biological keepsakes like teeth, first haircuts, and hospital bracelets serve that role.
For plenty of families, the tooth just ends up in a small container in a dresser drawer, no grand plan attached. It’s a tangible piece of a time that moves fast, and keeping it costs nothing.
Cultural Traditions Around the World
Every documented human culture has some kind of ritual around a child’s lost tooth. The Tooth Fairy is the most familiar version in the U.S. and U.K., but globally, mice and rats are far more common characters. In Spain, Guatemala, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Chile, and Mexico, children place lost teeth under their pillows for “El Ratoncito Pérez,” a mouse who leaves money or gifts. In Argentina, kids drop their teeth in a glass of water for the same magical rodent. In France and Switzerland, the visitor is called La Petite Souris, or “Little Mouse.” In South Africa, teeth go into a slipper for the Tooth Mouse.
The rodent connection traces back to a widespread ancient practice: offering a baby tooth to a mouse or rat with the hope that the child’s adult teeth would grow in as strong as a rodent’s. This ritual was recorded from Mexico to Russia to New Zealand, often accompanied by a prayer or song. In parts of Central Asia, baby teeth are placed in fat and fed to a dog for the same reason.
Throwing teeth is another global tradition. In Greece, Vietnam, Singapore, India, Sri Lanka, and China, children toss their baby teeth onto the roof. Cherokee children throw their tooth on the roof while repeating “Beaver, put a new tooth in my jaw!” four times. In parts of Africa, upper teeth go on the roof and lower teeth get buried in the ground. East Asian traditions reverse this: lower teeth are thrown up, upper teeth go down or under the bed. In Middle Eastern countries like Iraq, Jordan, and Egypt, children throw teeth toward the sky.
Some Central American cultures fashion lost baby teeth into jewelry, a tradition sometimes linked to ancient Viking customs in which objects belonging to children were considered powerful good luck charms, occasionally carried into battle.
Stem Cells Inside Baby Teeth
The inside of a baby tooth contains dental pulp, a soft tissue rich in stem cells. Researchers have identified at least three distinct stem cell populations within deciduous teeth, including types similar to bone marrow stem cells and others with characteristics of neural and connective tissue precursors. These cells are especially interesting because they come from young tissue, which tends to be more adaptable and faster-growing than adult stem cells. In lab comparisons, stem cells from baby teeth proliferated significantly faster than both bone marrow stem cells and adult dental pulp stem cells, reaching over 140 population doublings.
In animal studies, these cells have shown promise across several areas of regenerative medicine. When seeded onto scaffolds and implanted in mice, baby tooth stem cells differentiated into functional cells that generated new dental tissue resembling a natural tooth. In miniature pigs, the same type of cells successfully regenerated bone defects in the jaw. Researchers have also used them to repair critical-sized skull bone defects in rats and to treat bone deterioration in the femoral head of sheep. Beyond bone and dental repair, some baby tooth stem cells share properties with the specialized cells that maintain the surface of the eye, suggesting potential for ocular treatments.
Scientists have also converted baby tooth stem cells into induced pluripotent stem cells (a type that can become nearly any cell in the body) more easily and efficiently than the standard method using adult skin cells. This opens potential avenues for studying and eventually treating pediatric diseases.
Professional Tooth Banking
A small but growing industry offers to extract, process, and cryogenically store the stem cells from your child’s baby teeth. The idea is that these cells could be available decades later if your child ever needs regenerative therapy. Typical costs run around $2,500 for initial collection and processing, plus roughly $95 per year for ongoing storage.
It’s worth knowing that this technology is still largely theoretical for clinical use. No widely approved stem cell treatments currently use banked baby tooth cells for patients. Critics, including stem cell biologist Paul Knoepfler, have flagged that some dental banking companies make claims that outpace the current science. The stem cells are real and the research is legitimate, but the gap between lab results in animal models and treatments you could actually receive remains significant.
If you’re interested in preserving the option, timing matters. The cells inside the tooth need to be alive, which means the pulp can’t have dried out. A tooth that’s been sitting in a drawer for months won’t yield viable stem cells. Professional kits are designed for use right when the tooth falls out or is extracted by a dentist, keeping the tissue in a sterile solution to maintain cell viability during shipping.
DNA Stored in Teeth
Teeth are one of the most durable sources of DNA in the human body. Using standard extraction methods, a single tooth can yield 55 to 86 micrograms of DNA at a purity level suitable for genetic analysis. That DNA holds up well over time, even in old or partially degraded teeth, making it usable for identification, ancestry testing, or medical genetic screening years after the tooth was lost.
Forensic scientists routinely extract DNA from teeth because the hard enamel and dentin protect the genetic material inside from environmental damage far better than soft tissue does. For parents, this means a baby tooth stored in a dry, clean container is a reliable genetic record of your child. It’s not something most families will ever need, but in rare situations involving identification or future genetic health questions, having a preserved tooth provides a backup source of your child’s DNA that doesn’t degrade the way a cheek swab sample might over decades.
How to Store Baby Teeth at Home
If you’re keeping a tooth purely as a keepsake, the main concern is preventing it from yellowing, cracking, or developing an odor. Rinse the tooth gently to remove any blood, let it air dry completely, and store it in a small, dry container. Avoid sealing a wet tooth in plastic, as trapped moisture encourages bacterial growth. A simple pillbox, small glass jar, or even a fold of tissue paper inside a labeled envelope works fine for long-term sentimental storage.
If your goal is to preserve DNA rather than stem cells, the same dry storage approach works well. Teeth stored dry at room temperature retain usable DNA for years. Just avoid tap water, which can damage cells and introduce contaminants. For anyone considering stem cell preservation, home storage won’t work. You’d need a professional collection kit with a sterile balanced salt solution, ideally used within hours of the tooth coming out, to keep the living cells inside the pulp intact during transport to a lab.