Touch does not propagate anymore

Since touch method has changed significantly, there no possibility to do something like this anymore:

class FirstModel < ActiveRecord::Base

end

class SecondModel < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :first_model, :touch => true
end

class ThirdModel < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :second_model, :touch => true
end

m = ThirdModel.first
m.touch # updates m record only, doesn't execute callbacks

m.attributes = { ... }
m.save! # updates m and m.second_model only

I think it was a really useful feature - I used it for caching or versioning several times. Is there any reason (apart from higher performance) to do it using update_attribute instead of saving the model?