It’s an argument that has passed from household to household from generation to generation.

If you have little boys in the home, then there’s a good chance one of them is going to want long hair. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if you’re a mom who already has very little time on her hands, you will find that it can end up being quite the handful! Here are a few reasons why short-hair might be a smarter choice and worth putting your foot down for.

It looks good

This isn’t to say that long hair can’t look good. But when they’re younger, boys don’t care quite as much about keeping a perfectly controlled coiffure. They’re going to come home from school a lot more often with it all over the place. Kids will be messy and there’s little you can do to get in the way of that besides sending them on in pristine (or near pristine) condition and hoping for the best when they come back. Short doesn’t have to mean short on style, either. If your son is a little on the trendier side, there are plenty of great short haircuts that can help him look his best.

It’s so much easier to deal with

Everyone’s hair has its own characteristics, to put it politely. To put it bluntly, if your son has hair that’s hard to control, keeping it long is going to make it even more so.  For instance, if your son has a cowlick, keeping it short is one of the best ways to stay in control of it. You can read more about cowlick treatment and find more ways to calm it, but he might not be as pleased to have his hair permed and keeping it gelled is a little more effort adding up each day. If his hair has any unruly characteristics, then having less hair to have to calm down is as solid a tactic as you’re going to get.

You can do it yourself

If you’re a mom with more than one kid on her plate, the value of both time and money becomes very apparent. With short hair, it’s a lot easier to save yourself both if you’re willing to pick up a pair of clippers yourself. There are some fantastic tutorials on clipping boys’ hair to make sure that you don’t just go in scissors waving, too. You might have to buy a clipper and tripper, but it can take as little as ten minutes compared to the length of the trip and the wait you’ll get at the hairdressers and it can save you literally hundreds of dollars a year if you have more than one boy in the family.

Short hair is, simply put, a lot easier to maintain, to keep looking good, and can even save you some money if you don’t mind getting hands-on. When they’re old enough to be entirely responsible for it, then by all means, let them style as their hearts desire. For now, you can save yourself a lot of trouble by sticking to short.