Her parents had had eleven children and he was the only male that hadn’t passed away. This was agonizing and distressing for Stanton’s father because he looked at Eleazer as his only hope left for a successful child merely because of his gender. When she went to seek comfort from her father he simply grieved and responded by saying, “Oh, my daughter, I wish you were a boy!” (18). Stanton “... tells the story of a smart, independent girl who had been insulted by her father’s preference for boys and who had turned the affront into a philosophy of women’s rights” (181). This bothered Stanton everyday of her childhood and was the start of her endeavour towards feminism.
Another very influential person in Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s life was Lucretia Mott. In the nineteenth century, girls role models were usually men, but her first female role model was Mott, even though she was twice Stanton’s age. She was a
“freethinker, an advocate for women’s rights, and a patient mentor, who encouraged the younger women to pursue ‘all the enquires of thy open, generous confiding spirit”