to think getting up early isn't an indication of moral superiority?

[MaryJObliged]

I do get up early most days (between 6 and 6:30am) so I have time to walk the dog and go to the gym before my long commute to work or so I get more time to work when I work from home. But I've never seen this as some kind of positive side to my character or indication of my moral superiority. I just do it because it's practical for my life.

My mother, however, is of the opinion that people who "lounge around" in bed until 7 or 8am are lazy bastards who don't know that they're missing the best time of the day. When she comes to stay on weekends she'll stand at my living room window first thing (say about 8-8:30am) commenting on all the drawn curtains and the lazy buggers asleep when they could be cracking on with accomplishing things.

This is a very odd attitude to me but I've found quite a few people in my life share this perspective. Am I being unreasonable? Or am I, in fact, morally superior because of my early mornings ?

load of bollocks. Unless someone is lying in bed when they should be doing something important, like looking after kids or going to work, what the fuck has it got to do with anyone else?

as it happens, I like to get up early, especially at this time of year, but I don't feel it bestows any superiority on me.

There are many who think like your mum. I'm not one of them. My curtains weren't opened until 12.15 today because I went back to bed after school run.

I am a night owl and far more productive at 8pm than 8am.

Yanbu I just got up, I'm a massive nightowl go to bed in the wee hours of the morning and get up after lunchtime normally, Ive always prefered that way and my first job out of school was a nightshift one, i just function better at night

I remember reading somewhere that as people get older, their bodies produce less melatonin.

This is apparently why so many older people tend to wake up earlier in the mornings, and not because of personality traits.

She'd love me

I consider 7am ridiculously early for a non-work day

And 10am a middling lie in on a weekend

Was hell getting up on a weekend when the kids were little, now they old enough to sort themselves I've reverted back. Much more civilised.

Your mums a nosy cow.

Love a lie in and couldn't give a shit

No moral superiority here, I've just been broken by DC

My MIL is the same, she gets up a 5am, she's been to the gym and home by 7am, then moans at my FIL for still being in bed.

But it's ok for her to fall asleep for a couple of hours each afternoon!

It is in my mum's book, along with having a clean and tidy house, opening your curtains every morning and taking your washing in at night.

I am a domestic slattern on many counts (and definitely love a lie-in) but I do get twitchy if our curtains aren't opened first thing and if our washing is still out in the evening. So somewhere the lesson must have been seared on my brain!

'Tis all bollocks though OP - no moral superiority involved just a nice healthy dose of maternal guilt

Anything that causes a minor competitive wankfest of Top Trumps, is annoying. Her views are a bit skewed.

Xposted.

I'm still in my pjs. Having gone back to bed after the school run.

I function way better on a night. As the pp said more productive at 8pm than 8am, actually more productive at 1am than 1pm.

My mum's always been like this though it's not connected to her old age. She's only 62 as well

I kind of got it that she'd use this to coax me out of bed when I was a slovenly teenager but I don't get why she keeps on with it.

It makes me laugh because she loves an afternoon nap but can't seem to get that some people don't nap in the afternoons but have that extra two or three hours tagged on to their sleep.

I was sort of hoping you'd all tell me IABU and that I am, in fact, superior

Yep I know the type "oh but you're wasting the day!!!!"

errr, how is sleeping in my cosy bed possibly a waste?!

But they might be "achieving things" with drawn curtains surely?

Lying in bed chatting to their DH/DWs or playing with their kids?

They might be mopping the floors or hoovering or cleaning the bathroom before they've had their shower.

Queen Yep, wasting the day is my mum's favourite!

Yanbu.
I have never and will never be a lark. Even as a baby The baby years were purgatory for me!

I'm a lark and it's never crossed my mind to think myself morally superior 😳
I really don't care if people choose to stay in bed all morning because it's none of my business and I can't lie in bed once I'm awake.

I tend to wake up around five and can never get back to sleep and can't stay in bed when I am awake. However by six in the evening I am really tired. I could happily go to bed at nine each night but struggle on until ten. No moral superiority just wished I could lie in

I think its a generational thing. In the days when women had huge amounts of physical housework, they judged each other by how clean the step was, looked at each others washing on the line, and noticed how clean their children were etc. If you were a good housewife, you had 'standards' which did not include lying in bed whilst your husband was at work. My MIL had a mother who lay in bed whilst my MIL got her siblings ready for school and cleaned the house. Her mother was great in other respects, but not much of a one for housework or looking after her children. In those days, it really mattered if you were lazy because the house fell to bits and the hubby and kids weren't fed. It was the equivalent of a job for women to run the house and if they were lying in bed late they were essentially late for work.

DH is a night owl. It does get irritating at the weekend as frequently by the time he's dredged himself out of bed after a long, lingering lie in, the DCs are up the walls and the best weather of the day has passed.

Really your own timing doesn't matter if it doesn't have any impact on anyone else.

My mum's annoying though. She seems to infer that just because the DC's don't have a 7pm bedtime, that they don't have a bedtime at all and gets judgey over it. An early bedtime doesn't work for us as it would mean DH doesn't see the DCs in the week and dinner would be split in two sittings. When I was working, we weren't even in the house before 6:10 pm so that would have meant ploughing straight into tea and bed with no unwinding, then the DCs waking earlier and interfering with my planning/ marking time as I'm better in the morning. Given that the school/ nursery are within 5 minutes of home, I don't need them awake before 7:30 and they get sufficient sleep on a later bedtime routine.

I'm a morning person as is ds2 . Dh and ds 1 are night owls. It's a great combination.
I do however find I've done loads by the time the others get up!!!! Making there day easy!!!

bumblebee You're absolutely right. I'd not thought of how much influence my mum's own mum had on her thinking about these kinds of things. Though my mum's mum was never a housewife, always worked out of the home, she still did everything around the house.

My mum's only 62 so she's not of the "polish your back step" generation but she actually did used to polish our doorstep when I was a kid.

Yanbu! I don't have to get up until 7.45/8am most days for work, yet my sister who has to be up at 6 says I'm lazy, don't know what the meaning of early is and how '8am is a lay in to her' not my fault that my job enables me to start at 9. Somehow she seems to think it is my fault.

I tend to get up with the sunrise this time of year.

I love the first couple of hours getting stuff done before everyone else gets up.

"Early to rise and early to bed makes a person healthy, wealthy and dead."

James Thurber