The Dangers of Unschaaling
Reasons to be cautious about not doing something.
Unschaaling is a controversial parenting technique in which children are not particularly encouraged to hollow out an egg and place another, smaller egg inside of it. “I mean, they can if they want to?” said one prospective parent. “But why on Earth would I make them?”
In the United States, unschaaling has rapidly grown in popularity in recent years. In a 2022 estimate, a record 72.5 million children had never once, with or without the help of an adult, carefully cracked an egg, removed the contents, placed another, intact egg within the shell, and glued the fragments back together. On social media, parents in the movement proudly talk about their children’s other activities, most of which are not even egg-adjacent. Some share photos and videos of their children not asking if they can look for unusually large eggs in the carton. Instead, unschaaling parents encourage other interests and activities they consider, usually without any scientific basis, to be more important to future development. They’ll often be seen boasting about their children’s “scholastic achievements,” for example, or “how much fun they’re having,” when there is no evidence of any lasting impact for these trendy childhood activities.
There has never been a large-scale study of adult life outcomes for children of unschaaling. (As of this writing, all articles making sweeping claims about unschaaling are full of blatant fabrications and misleading use of statistics.) However, studies of small (usually n<20) groups of children have raised some red flags. Children who practice unschaaling do consistently worse on standard aptitude tests. Those aged 7-9 perform on these tests, which involve quickly assessing the volume of a simulated egg, as though they were almost a year younger than children in the control group. Other common tests, such as of the ability to recite the poem “Humpty Dumpty,” show similar results. Defenders of unschaaling argue that children can quickly catch up to their peers in these areas, as soon as they have any reason to do so. But, as critics point out, such a day often never comes. An overwhelming majority of such cases go on to practice unschaaling themselves, perpetuating what could be termed a cycle of abuse and neglect.
Even unschaaling’s fiercest proponents must concede that it is not for everyone. While some exceptional children, those whose successes are trumpeted in TikTok videos and bumperstickers, may thrive as adults, others are permanently stunted. Unschaaled children lack a basic human experience shared by all of their peers, resulting in a level of social alienation that will only increase as the number of such children rises. A staggering 16% of unschaaled children grow up to be functionally illiterate. And the dangers don’t start when the child leaves home.
As the number of unschaalers grows, so does the evidence that this lifestyle is unsafe. As a recent analysis notes, an estimated 37.4% of unschaaled children experience a child protective services investigation at some point. According to the CDC, 15 unschaalers out of every 100,000 will die, before reaching adulthood, of causes other than salmonella, a figure that is far higher than for the general population.
But when challenged with these figures, parents engaged in this practice are usually at a loss for words. When pressed, they fall back on tradition. “I’ve never heard of anybody having their children nestle eggs inside other eggs,” they say. “Are you sure that’s even a thing?” It’s not, but that’s not at all relevant to any of the statistics I’ve cited. To encourage parents to engage in unschaaling, merely because almost all already do, is to put the next generation at serious risk, thanks only to a particularly pernicious case of status quo bias.
