Chapter 2 documents the politics of passing the Sheppard-Towner Act through Congress and the concessions the Children’s Bureau made in order to do so. These concessions had significant implications for how the law was administered at the federal and state levels. Dodging legal and political challenges to their administrative authority, the Children’s Bureau agents ceded significant control to the states and therefore struggled to oversee state programming – and critically state documentation. Within this dynamic, the Children’s Bureau and state directors alike showed a great deal of ambivalence about federal oversight in state programming. By focusing on the administrative tensions characterizing Sheppard-Towner’s implementation, this chapter demonstrates the contingent process of state-building in the early twentieth century – much of which was done with voluntary labor. In the process, it exposes what the promise of Sheppard-Towner programs meant to ordinary mothers and public health workers across the nation and describes the disappointment some felt at the limits of what the law could offer.