In the depiction of mothers, Cassatt consciously avoided using the female nude, which she considered as an appeal to men's treatment of women as erotic objects. Rather, she wished to emphasize the “moral sensibility and totality” of women’s lives and only to suggest their sexuality through maternal relationships. The act of touching between the mother and the child in her works serves to indicate emotional and physical gratification as well as a feeling of protection and intimacy. On the other hand, Cassatt limits herself to include the nude body of children, but such nudity carries no sexual implication; instead, it is “natural and sensual” and symbolizes “goodness, purity, and lack of artifice.”Combining the fully clothed mother with a partially dressed child, she rejected any sexual feelings; she moves the sensuality to a proper condition, the motherhood in which physical intimacy is allowed and appropriate.