Historically a much greater portion of the population was involved with agriculture (75% of the working population)[1] at a time when artificial light was both

Historically a much greater portion of the population was involved with agriculture (75% of the working population)[1] at a time when artificial light was both relatively poor quality and very expensive. Given those constraints it makes sense that there was massive societal pressure to maximize the hours the sun did shine. Looking at the charts on that site also brought home how relatively recent the shift to non farm based employment really was (a couple generations). Even that probably fails to account for large behavioral changes: for example my great grandparents had a "garden" that was at least an order of magnitude larger than any suburban garden I've seen in the last decade. They weren't "farmers", just poor and the extra food they grew and canned was a huge help. 1 - https://ourworldindata.org/employment-in-agriculture https://ourworldindata.org/employment-in-agriculture