Their Children Want to Play Football. Parents Ask: Is It Worth the Risk?

Living in Midland, Texas, where football and its Friday night lights are king, Greta Braker had braced for this moment.

Her son, Thomas, a seventh grader, wanted to play tackle football.

Thomas had played chess and practiced taekwondo. But last year, despite repeated warnings about the risks of brain injury in football, he begged to join his school team. And he made what Ms. Braker and her husband thought was a compelling case: Most of the boys in his cl*** had signed up to play.

His parents gave in after considering the alternative — social isolation.

“This is something that we thought long and hard about,” said Ms. Braker, a personal injury lawyer. “His dad and I never wanted him to play football.”

Sighing loudly, she said, “All of this is stressful, man.”

A new study released on Tuesday brought even more unease to the many parents who are either considering putting their child in tackle football or who already have a child in the sport.

According to that study of hundreds of cases over a recent six-year period, at least one in four of all the people who have played in the N.F.L. might expect to end up with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative brain disease thought to come from repeated hits to the head in contact sports. The disease, known as C.T.E., can cause behavioral changes, rage, memory loss, depression and advanced dementia.

The new information added yet another layer of fear, uncertainty or guilt — sometimes all three — to parents who have, sometimes reluctantly, let their children play tackle football.

Matthew Sager, a psychiatrist from Madison, Wis., said he saw the study and briefly imagined asking his son, August, to quit the sport. It didn’t seem plausible: August is a high school senior.

“If he was 14 and debating what he should do this fall, I think it would be a much different conversation,” Dr. Sager said. “But he’s got three months of this sport left and, theoretically, I’m thinking, how much more damage could this do? But you know, I don’t know.”

After seeing the latest data, Dr. Sager said he felt some guilt for letting his son play. In the last several years, he and his wife had tried to do everything they could to protect August on the field, including buying a $700 helmet that they thought would protect his brain.

“I think I’m more angry than anything,” he said, explaining that the N.F.L. could and should do more to let parents and players know the risks of the game.

Dr. Sager, 52, played football growing up, never aware of C.T.E. Now it prompts him to sometimes panic when he forgets or misplaces something. Is it the disease, or just normal aging?

Other parents are still mulling the decision of letting their children play, or have already decided against it.

Monica Whitehurst, a brand communications expert from Aurora, Ohio, expects that her fourth-grade son will soon ask to play tackle football. He has played flag football for several years, but next year his school will offer only the tackle version.

She said she has already explained to him that it’s a family decision to stick with flag football.

“It’s kind of like kids and cellphones,” she said. “It’s a really personal decision that every family has to come to on their own.”

Ms. Whitehurst said her son was starting his campaign to play tackle, saying things to her like, “You’re ruining my dreams.”

That might actually have some truth to it. The parents are far from football-obsessed; Ms. Whitehurst played cello and her husband played tennis. But her son loves the sport so much that his bedsheets have the N.F.L. logo on them.

“He says stuff like, ‘When I get to college, I will be an adult and I can try out then,’” she said, admitting that, like most parents, she has waffled on her decision.

But reading the new data on C.T.E., Ms. Whitehurst said to herself: “Yes, this is why you’re making the decision you’re making. Like, this is a real thing. This is so damaging. This is so harmful. The data definitely helps us be more confident in our decision.”

Some parents, though, still believe that the positive aspects of the sport can outweigh the negative.

Connor Green, a father of three young children, started playing tackle football at age 8, a time when still-growing boys often looked like they had been swallowed by their hulking shoulder pads and jerseys.

He said the sport gave him an outlet for his energy, and he stopped picking fights with other students at his elementary school outside of Boston. It later helped him get into Middlebury College, in Vermont, where he became team captain in his senior year. People in the sport, he said, helped open doors for him at Google, where he now works as an account executive in advertising sales.

Mr. Green, 37, described football as the second most influential force in his life, behind his parents.

Yet when asked if his two sons, ages 5 and almost 8, will play tackle football, he has no clear answer.

“I have so many mixed feelings,” Mr. Green said. “I know it’s dangerous and there are inherent risks.”

What disturbed him the most about C.T.E. was learning that some young athletes who died by suicide were found to have it. Reading about them moved him to tears, he said.

Mr. Green himself sustained at least three concussions during his career. But, even with that experience, he said that flag football wouldn’t be a good trade-off.

“Being able to hit someone is part of the fun of football — like the physicality of it,” he said.

So what will he do? His wife grew up in a family of runners who were not into football. So she will decide if their sons would play.

And right now, she says no way.