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Alexander's association with dolls began the year she was born, when her step-father opened the United States' first Doll Hospital. Before the invention of plastic, most dolls were made of china and were highly breakable; by restoring their shattered dolls to health, Maurice earned the gratitude of countless children. "I remember a father coming in the middle of the night because his little girl was sick and had broken her doll and needed it right now—a difficult task when the poor doll's head was shattered into dozens of pieces," Beatrice said in 1983.

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The contrast between the wealth of many of Maurice's customers and the poverty of the neighborhood made a deep impression on the young Beatrice, and like many other children of immigrants, she became highly motivated to achieve a better future. "When I was 11 or 12," she remembered, "I realized that there were poor people and there were rich people, and I leaned towards the rich. I wanted to have a carriage and a hat with ostrich feathers." Hannah assumed her daughter would achieve these goals by "marry[ing] well" and joked that it would take three husbands to support Beatrice in the manner she desired.

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Alexander's early surroundings also accustomed her to seeing women working at least as hard as men. Because few immigrant families could afford to conform to middle-class ideals of leisured ladies, the mothers and older sisters of most of Beatrice's playmates would have contributed to the family income. If they did not work outside the home, then immigrant women helped in family businesses, took in boarders, or did piecework in the home. Beatrice's own mother worked with her husband in his shop, as well as having full responsibility for the home. "I can truthfully say," Alexander asserted, "that my mother worked harder than my father."