Why is being an early bird seen as somehow morally preferable?

[Wrongdissection]

DH is an early bird, he’s up by 6am latest every single morning, exercising and pottering about before work, catching up on tv, sticking washing in and just general DOING early doors. He regularly falls asleep on the sofa by 8.30pm. Making it to 10pm is an achievement we comment on (unless special occasion and we’re out and about!).

I am not an early bird. I set my alarm for 15 minutes before I’m due to start work (homeworker before all this anyway) and struggle when I have to do it earlier. I do my pottering and exercising after work, I catch up on tv and am usually ready to go to bed between 10 and midnight.

So why does everyone seem to say things like ‘if you went to bed earlier you’d be able to get up earlier’ or ‘you’re tired because you stay up late’ and yet no one ever suggests to DH that he’d be able to stay up later if he stayed in bed longer in the morning? Why is getting up early somehow morally superior and to be aspired to?! We’re awake for pretty much the same amount of hours per day so why is one better than the other?

I don't know if anyone mentioned this but I think it's because it conjures up laziness. Either the early birds think it's lazy behaviour, and the night owls are aware that the early birds think like that! If that makes sense! Agree though, it makes no difference if you're both awake the same length of time, and it's wrong that night owls should be labelled this way. Myself I'm neither, I could adapt to one or the other but my life dictates I have to be flexible. Given the choice I still think I would mix it up a bit, because I'm not a good sleeper, so would just go with the flow.

Dh is an early bird and its marvellous. He brings me coffee at 7.30 and I laze in bed for an hour. By the time I go downstairs he's tidied and done laundry. We go to bed at the same time, about 11.

I am lazy in the mornings, especially now I am not working. I relish it and couldn't care less if people judge.

I don't like laying in later than 9am though!!

I'm an owl whose had to become a lark owing to DC & dogs & dh who is an early bird. Much as I like working at night etc, I think you do get more done in the day if you start earlier (sorry to say ). Partially because society is set up to be "early" (especially where I live on the continent) and partially because there are less distractions early on in the day, than there are in the evening.

In our house it's a bit of an issue because the people who need to be up end up doing all the work. Or most of it.

Left to my own devices I am entirely nocturnal. I get very little of note done before lunchtime and if I'm writing, nothing worth reading happens until mid/late afternoon and often I'm best late at night.

My partner jokes that I have a 'witching hour' around 10-11pm where I seem to get a sudden burst of motivation and energy and get lots done.

I once had a boss like this. He would be in work at 7am, then finish at 3 to pick his kids up from school.

I would get in at 9:30, but routinely work until 7pm. So I worked longer hours than him, but he judged EVERYONE by his own working hours, completely ignoring the several hours we would work when he wasn't there. It really pissed me off and since then I've always lived by the attitude that everyone lives and works to their own rhythm and we shouldn't judge others by our own.

PILs came to stay recently. Despite being on holiday they'd be up for the day at 6 am, MIL loudly narrating everything she did. They'd be making exaggerated yawning movements by 9pm

I would be out of the house for 12 hours most days working. DH would have dinner ready for 8pm when I came in. They complained bitterly saying it was a ridiculous hour to eat, we'd all die, suffer some hideous metabolic dischord. DH politely suggest they get up later and go to bed later. They declared that would be extremely lazy so DH suggested they eat their main meal at lunch instead. So for the sake of a couple of hours in bed they sulked and didn't eat with us.

It took me a lot of effort not to throttle them when, at the weekend I'd chill in my lovely bed reading the Paper and maybe arrive downstairs showered and dressed at 10.30am and FIL would look at his watch and go 'oh, well good afternoon, we thought you'd never emerge'. Fuck off!!

I don't personally judge and I'm a late riser myself but I can see why getting up early is seen by some as more moral.

• Activities typically done in the early am (eg, exercise, getting to work early, house work, making a healthy breakfast) are positive ones, while activities associated with staying up late (snacking on junk food, gaming, TV, internet) are less so.

• Its not always the case that an early bird sleeps say 10pm-6am and the late riser 1am-9am. Often they may both go to bed at the same time but the late riser sleeps longer.

Does it not depend on the time of year? I'm very affected by the light. Spring summer I'm up up early and bed late. Winter I struggle. We get lie I.s until 9 at weekends cos t g e kids are older now, but I feel like I don't get as much out of the weekends

Note also early birds are the kind of person who think nothing of an 8am meeting. At least once a week one of these joys pops in my calendar. Never yet seen someone put in a 6 to 7pm meeting as a matter of course. Even a 5pm one would probably raise comments but 8 am? Totally fine apparently

OP you shod read a book called 'how to be idle' by Tom Hodgkinson. He addresses exactly this question in the first chapter. According to him, it started with Benjamin Franklin, who came up with 'early to bed, early to rise...' and was then propagated by those who stood to benefit from the industrial revolution as they needed the folk of the day to buy into the notion that getting up for work was a desirable thing. Before then, patterns were much more diverse and varied. It's an interesting read!

@jonnybiscuits YES!!! I get frequent meeting requests for 8am meetings. I know for a fact if I tried to schedule a 6pm one there would be shock and horror.

I'm a lark rather than an owl and am usually dozing off by 10pm but DH is the opposite and I'm very much of the live and let live philosophy that you should do what suits you.

The bit that really annoys me though is when people live by their own schedule but still expect to use 'standard' timings, such as evening being for relaxing etc. No, if you slept half the morning and did no housework most of the day because it was the equivalent of your morning then you need to do it in the evening even if I've got my feet up watching TV at that time because I already did the equivalent in the morning. I can't stand it when the late risers (eg, most of DHs family) piggy back onto my schedule once they've slept through the boring morning chores bit. If you follow your own schedule then follow it 100%.

Not RTFT but my theory is that it comes from puritan ideas of being busy and productive. The devil makes work for idle hands and laying in bed while the sun is out is the height of slovenly idleness.

I once fell out with housemates because after being awake all night I decided to go for a run at 6am before bed. The closing of the front door disturbed them. Never mind that I endured 2 years of them running up and downstairs, singing and banging doors from 9am onwards. That was my fault for being a night owl and me waking them the once was much worse.

The bit that really annoys me though is when people live by their own schedule but still expect to use 'standard' timings, such as evening being for relaxing etc. No, if you slept half the morning and did no housework most of the day because it was the equivalent of your morning then you need to do it in the evening even if I've got my feet up watching TV at that time because I already did the equivalent in the morning. I can't stand it when the late risers (eg, most of DHs family) piggy back onto my schedule once they've slept through the boring morning chores bit. If you follow your own schedule then follow it 100%.

Yes yes yes. Bloody yes. And I'm sorry to say to all you Owls, this is often what does happen. Not always, obviously. But it does. I've lost count of the number of women who tell me their Dh can't help with x or y because he only gets up at 11:00 but when I ask why he can't do it after the answer is he's too busy as he then has to go to work etc etc. But when asked what he's up so late for its inevitably gaming or tv or music. Not washing, ironing etc.

Or, even worse, women who with newborns are STILL doing all the late evening feeds/settling etc because their night owl husbands are awake but couldn't possibly be disturbed as it's "their" time and yet the mum is still getting up with a crying baby at 5 am. Don't even get me STARTED on those. I know DH used to get irritated that he had to stop whatever he was doing to go to DS when he cried at midnight but he was AWAKE. I was sleeping. There was no discussion. Just as I often had kids early, including sometimes taking them out, so he could sleep in.

jonnybiscuits

Your PIL story gave me rage just reading it. People are the worst.

I just tell myself that if some people have nothing better to commend themselves with than getting up at the crack of dawn then they are to be pitied.

See my DH will sometimes (not often, he’s a darl as a rule) get tetchy about say for instance, the washing not being on when I have said I will do it or whatever. And so does it himself. With accompanying theatrics. And will huff about me not doing stuff because I’m in bed. But I will do it. Just later than he would prefer. Likewise I’m happy to be hoovering or whatever at 8pm but he complains that he’d rather I sit down with him and watch TV or that I’m spoiling his time to relax. And because I’m not on his schedule I’m the one in the wrong for being a night owl.

Well, I am on your side on the washing one - as long as it gets done, if you choose to do it at night, that's your thing.

I am on his side with the vacuuming. In the same way that I assume he doesn't whip out the vacuum cleaner at 8am while you're sleeping, or mow the lawn at 8:30, I think it's reasonable that his relaxing time is respected up to a point. So you probably need to come up with a solution that works for these ones.

If he's up at 6 and falls asleep by 8:30, is he sleeping 9.5 hours per night? That seems like too much. I'd expect 7-8 hours for an adult. Is he getting good enough sleep? Or does he have sleep apnea?

In any case, anyone expecting me to be up at 6 and putting on washing as well, would be getting my huffy self to contend with.

Maybe he'd prefer his own house where he can live per his own schedule.

I'm normally a night owl but have had to switch to working earlier in the morning during lockdown. I used to get up at 7:30 and be out of the house before 8 (dh is more naturally a morning person so he got dd up and ready). Now I'm at my computer at 7.

It's just different. I'm doing the same amount of stuff in a day, I'm just doing it at a different time to normal. Dh is more naturally a lark, but has switched a bit during lockdown, the other way. So he used to be up at 6:30 but is now not getting up till 9, then thinks he's done more work than me because he's finishing an hour or so later in the afternoon. Dd has turned into an owl though, she won't go to bed til between 10-12, and gets up about 9:30am while she doesn't have to go out to school. She tells me she much prefers evenings to mornings, so that's ok then.

It's very annoying to live in a house with someone keeping different hours to you who thinks their way is the best way. I have several times had to tell dh that I've done just as many hours of work as he has, I've just done them at a different time to his.

I'm awful for judging on this. I love getting up early and have awful guilt if I stay in bed past 8. When my partner says he didn't get up until 11am I do think . I couldn't tell you why though. I would never ever say it out loud though. I keep my judgy pants hoiked up in private.

I agree. I am a night owl. I got up at 5.45am for work, but never grew to like it and was just exhausted all day and didn't enjoy anything. I am just wired that way. I love walking at night and being out in the dark. Sitting out under the moon makes me as happy as others on a sunny day. I think sometimes I have reverse SAD as am always miserable in the summer.

I married another night owl thankfully and we don't have children so don't see our habits as anyone else's business. We don't make any noise or have tv on without headphones etc.

MIL is the worst for this. She thinks anyone in bed after 7am is lazy, whether you are tired or unwell. DH used to work nights and would hear her on the phone complaining he hadn't got out of bed till 10am. But she sits around watching tv till mid morning so isn't exactly productive herself.

It's exactly the same in an office working flexitime! Those in @ 7.30 and finishing at 4.00pm are so judgemental of those of us who wander in at 10.00, as though we're not doing a full day but they don't see us still there at 18:30!

It just suits some people better to start their day later and as one of my later working colleagues once said, why would I want to go home at 4? There's nothing on the tv & it's too early for my tea!

I am a night owl and always have been. When I am able to get up early (or have to for some reason) I do love the early morning, but I also love the evening and early morning (1am!)
When people say you are wasting the day, I respond with you go to bed at 10pm and that to me is wasting the evening!! Going to bed at 10pm to me is like them going to bed at 7pm