Editing Elizabeth Cady Stanton (section)

==Marriage and family==
 [[File:ElizabethCadyStanton.jpg|thumb|left|Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her daughter, Harriot]]

As a young woman, Stanton traveled often to the home of her cousin, [[Gerrit Smith]], who also lived in upstate New York. His views were very different from those of her conservative father. Smith was an abolitionist and a member of the "[[Secret Six]]," a group of men who financed [[John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry]] in an effort to spark an armed uprising of enslaved African Americans.<ref>Griffith, p. 24</ref> At Smith's home, where she spent summers and was considered "part of the family,"<ref>{{cite book
|page=67
|title=Ballots, Bloomers and Marmalade. The Life of Elizabeth Smith Miller
|first=Norman K.
|last=Dann
|location=[[Hamilton, New York]]
|publisher=Log Cabin Books
|year=2016
|isbn=9780997325102}}</ref> she met [[Henry Brewster Stanton]], a prominent abolitionist agent. Despite her father's reservations, the couple married in 1840, omitting the word "obey" from the marriage ceremony. Stanton later wrote, "I obstinately refused to obey one with whom I supposed I was entering into an equal relation."<ref>Stanton, ''Eighty Years & More'', [https://archive.org/details/eightyyearsandm00stangoog/page/n93/mode/2up p. 72]</ref>
While uncommon, this practice was not unheard of; Quakers had been omitting "obey" from the marriage ceremony for some time.<ref>McMIllen, p. 96</ref>
Stanton took her husband's surname as part of her own, signing herself Elizabeth Cady Stanton or E. Cady Stanton, but not Mrs. Henry B. Stanton.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Antal |first=Lara |title=The Women's Suffrage Movement |date=2017 |publisher=Cavendish Square Publishing LLC |isbn=978-1-5026-2711-7 |series=The Interwar Years Ser |location=New York, NY |pages=46-47}}</ref>

Soon after returning from their European honeymoon, the Stantons moved into the Cady household in Johnstown. Henry Stanton studied law under his father-in-law until 1843, when the Stantons moved to [[Boston]] (Chelsea), Massachusetts, where Henry joined a law firm. While living in Boston, Elizabeth enjoyed the social, political, and intellectual stimulation that came with a constant round of abolitionist gatherings. Here, she was influenced by such people as [[Frederick Douglass]], [[William Lloyd Garrison]] and [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]].<ref>Stanton, ''Eighty Years & More'',
[https://archive.org/details/eightyyearsandm00stangoog/page/n149/mode/2up p. 127]</ref> In 1847, the Stantons moved to [[Seneca Falls (village), New York|Seneca Falls]], New York, in the [[Finger Lakes]] region. [[Elizabeth Cady Stanton House (Seneca Falls, New York)|Their house]], which is now a part of the [[Women's Rights National Historical Park]], was purchased for them by Elizabeth's father.<ref>Baker, p.110–111</ref>

[[File:Elizabeth Cady Stanton House with plaque 2013.jpg|thumb|right|The [[Elizabeth Cady Stanton House (Seneca Falls, New York)|Stanton house in Seneca Falls]]]]

The couple had seven children. At that time, child-bearing was considered to be a subject that should be handled with great delicacy. Stanton took a different approach, raising a flag in front of her house after giving birth, a red flag for a boy and a white one for a girl.<ref>Griffith, p. 66</ref> One of her daughters, [[Harriot Stanton Blatch]], became, like her mother, a leader of the [[Women's suffrage in the United States|women's suffrage movement]]. Because of the spacing of their children's births, one historian has concluded that the Stantons must have used birth control methods. Stanton herself said her children were conceived by what she called "voluntary motherhood." In an era when it was commonly held that a wife must submit to her husband's sexual demands, Stanton believed that women should have command over their sexual relationships and [[childbirth|childbearing]].<ref>Baker, pp. 106–108</ref> She also said, however, that "a healthy woman has as much passion as a man."<ref>Quoted in Baker, p. 109</ref> 
<!-- [[File:ElizabethCadyStanton-1848-Daniel-Henry.jpg|thumb|Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1848 with two of her three sons]] -->

Stanton encouraged both her sons and daughters to pursue a broad range of interests, activities, and learning.<ref>Baker, pp. 109–113</ref> She was remembered by her daughter Margaret as being "cheerful, sunny and indulgent."<ref>Baker, p.113</ref> She enjoyed motherhood and running a large household, but she found herself unsatisfied and even depressed by the lack of intellectual companionship and stimulation in Seneca Falls.<ref>Stanton, ''Eighty Years & More'', [https://archive.org/details/eightyyearsandm00stangoog/page/n169/mode/2up  pp. 146–148]</ref>

During the 1850s, Henry's work as a lawyer and politician kept him away from home for nearly 10 months out of every year. This frustrated Elizabeth when the children were small because it made it difficult for her to travel.<ref>Griffith, p. 80</ref> The pattern continued in later years, with husband and wife living apart more often than together, maintaining separate households for several years. Their marriage, which lasted 47 years, ended with Henry Stanton's death in 1887.<ref>Baker, p. 102</ref>

Both Henry and Elizabeth were staunch abolitionists, but Henry, like Elizabeth's father, disagreed with the idea of female suffrage.<ref>Baker, p.115</ref> One biographer described Henry as, "at best a halfhearted 'women's rights man.'"<ref>Ginzberg, p. 87</ref>