Western culture has a very unhealthy attitude towards sleep in general. There is only one socially accepted sleep pattern: Eight hours a night, in one block, st

Western culture has a very unhealthy attitude towards sleep in general. There is only one socially accepted sleep pattern: Eight hours a night, in one block, starting at between 10pm and 11pm and ending between 6am and 7am. This "early-bird" rhythm is celebrated in to the point of fetishisation and held up as the goal to which all productive adults must aspire. To behave otherwise is to be lazy, slothful, and not putting forward your all. That cycle works for many people of course, and for them life is easy. The world is modelled after them. But for everyone else it sucks. This covers both napping as this article discusses, but also other "chronotypes" both earlier and later (i.e., "night owls"). For these people they have to either force themselves into the "early bird" cycle (often by strict working hours or social pressure) and suffer for it, or go against it and find either flexible employment or even move to night-shift work if their chronotype is sufficiently late.