[4] Cassatt's interest in portraying the mother-child relationship first became clear when she started specializing in drypoints and pastels after 1887, and she intended to bring out the “psychological, sociological, and spiritual meaning” from everyday routines and subjects.

[6] Because her initial series of mothers and children resemble the clarity and simplicity of that in Renaissance art, she was called “la sainte famille modern” by her dealers such as Paul Durand-Ruel.

[8][5] 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.”[5] 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.

Due to this tilted angle of vision, the obscured facial expressions of the mother and the child create a psychological distance,[12] but their gazes at the reflections of the water guide the audience to concentrate on the activity of bathing.

[10]  Interlocking gestures also unify the scene: the contacts of hands on the knee, and the touching of the feet in the basin tie the painting together while conveying the underlying themes of intimacy and tenderness.

Both artists often depicted their bathers with "a lack of self-consciousness”,[5] but Degas tended to isolate nude female figures in order to bring forth the intimacy through their movements.

[5] These figures’ ignorance of being observed in their private moments has been interpreted as demonstrating Degas’ voyeuristic perspective as a man gaining sexual pleasures from the act of peeking.

[11] Cassatt was struck by the Japanese ukiyo-e woodcut prints exhibited at the Beaux-Arts Academy in Paris in 1890, three years before painting The Child's Bath.

Cassatt was drawn to the simplicity and clarity of the Japanese art, and the skillful use of blocks of color, such as the c.1801 print "Woman Washing a Baby in a Tub" or "Bathtime" (行水, Gyōzui) by Kitagawa Utamaro.

Like her previous works, the composition of The Child’s Bath resembles the shape of Japanese prints by utilizing an “extended vertical format” along with the long straight limbs of the figures.

During the late 1880s to 1890s, France favored domestic artists, and this made Cassatt feel excluded, prompting her to turn her attention back to her native country, the United States.

It was sold to Connecticut industrialist and art collector Harris Whittemore in 1894, but lent back to Durand-Ruel for an exhibition at their New York gallery in 1895 under the title La Toilette.

When the artist returned home in 1897, Durand-Ruel first submitted The Child’s Bath and Reverie (Also known as Woman with a Red Zinnia) to the annual exhibition at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in early 1898.