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The Real Cost of Child Care: Nevada Stories
Stories Shared
30
Including anonymous
States Reached
1
10 cities
Press-Ready
14
OK to share with media
Stories
Stories storytellers shared with your campaign. Anonymous stories show no name or contact details. Storytellers can change or revoke their story at any time — changes are flagged, and revoked stories are hidden and excluded from the CSV.
- Sam SmithnamedSep 18, 2026📍 Reno, NV
🏛️ Represented by:
Child care costs $2k a month, and it's costing me time with my kids
Child care costs me $2,000 a month for my two kids. That number drives almost every decision I make about work right now. To cover it, I had to take on more hours. That was the trade-off, and it's not really a trade-off I got to choose, it's just what the math required. What that means in practice is that I drop my kids off at 8 in the morning before work, and I don't see them again until after I get home. By the time everything settles, it's usually only about two hours a day I get to spend with them. Two I think about that a lot. I'm working more so I can afford the care that's supposed to make it possible for me to work, and in doing that, I'm missing the time I actually want with them. The whole thing circles back on itself. If care were cheaper, I wouldn't need all those extra hours. I'd be home more. I'd have more than two hours. That's not a complicated ask. It's just time with my own kids. I wish we could have child care for all. Not just families who can somehow figure out the math, but everyone. Because right now, a lot of parents are in the same spot I'm in, working harder and seeing their kids less, not because they want to, but because the cost leaves no other option. That's what I want decision-makers to understand.
Quoted in reports & materialsShared with elected officialsShared with the pressPublished on web or social mediaUsed in campaign messaging - AnonymousanonymousAug 20, 2026
Child care costs are forcing me to work more and see my kids less
I'm a single dad doing everything I can to keep my family together, and right now that means working two jobs just to stay afloat. Child care alone runs me over $2,000 a month. By the time I cover that, rent, and groceries, there's almost nothing left. Something had to give, so I took on the second job. That was the only way I could see to make the numbers work. But it came at a cost I didn't fully see coming. I now see my kids about two hours a day. That's it. In the morning when I drive them to drop-off, and in the evening when I pick them up, get them fed, and put them to bed. That's our time together. That's the whole day. Before the second job, I had more of them. Not a lot more, but enough that it felt like I was actually present. Now I feel like I'm passing through. I'm the one driving them and making sure they're fed and tucked in, but I'm exhausted, and I know they can feel that. I wish I didn't have to work this much just to stay afloat. I want decision-makers to understand that this isn't a small inconvenience. Child care costs this high don't just affect bank accounts. They pull parents away from their children. I'm not choosing to spend less time with my kids. I'm being pushed into that trade-off because there's no other way to cover the basics. Parents like me are working hard and doing everything right, and we still can't get ahead. What I want is for the people who make policy to take the real cost of child care seriously. Not just as a line item, but as something that shapes how families live and how much time parents actually get with their children. No parent should have to choose between staying financially afloat and being there for their kids.
Shared with elected officialsPublished on web or social mediaQuoted in reports & materialsUsed in campaign messagingThey may contact me about it - Jared BuskernamedAug 19, 2026📍 Reno, NV
🏛️ Represented by:
Paying $2,000 a month for child care means skipping meals
Two thousand dollars a month. That's what child care costs me, and it doesn't leave much room for anything else. I'm constantly making choices no parent should have to make, deciding between the car payment, groceries, rent, and the child care bill. Most months, I can't cover all of it. So sometimes I'm the one who goes without. I skip meals so that the other things get paid. I'm not behind on my bills because I'm not trying. I'm behind because the math doesn't work. Child care alone takes up so much of what I earn that there's almost nothing left to build on. I'm not saving. I'm not getting ahead. I'm just trying to hold the line ever. If child care were more affordable, I could actually breathe a little. I could buy groceries without calculating whether I have enough to make it to the next paycheck. I could stop choosing between eating and keeping the lights on. I could start thinking about the future instead of just surviving the week. I want decision-makers to understand that this isn't an edge case. This is what life looks like for a lot of Nevada families right now. The cost of child care is so high that it's pulling everything else down with it. We need real relief, not someday, but soon.
Shared with elected officialsShared with the press - Gracefirst name_onlyAug 14, 2026📍 Carson City, NV
🏛️ Represented by:
It worked once, briefly
For seven months in 2024 we had it: a spot two blocks from my office, a teacher my daughter ran to every morning, a rate the pandemic-era grant kept at something we could pay. Then the grant lapsed, tuition jumped $340 a month in one letter, and the teacher left for the district. I keep thinking about those seven months. Nothing about them was impossible. We built it, briefly, by accident, with temporary money. I am not asking for the moon. I am asking for the thing we already did, on purpose this time.
Shared with elected officialsPublished on web or social mediaQuoted in reports & materialsShared with the pressUsed in campaign messagingThey may contact me about it - Steve CarranzanamedAug 11, 2026📍 Sparks, NV
🏛️ Represented by:
Second shift at the second job
I coach JV football, teach middle school science, and drive for a delivery app from 8 to midnight three nights a week, and the app money goes to one thing: the gap between what care costs and what teaching pays. I sat down once and figured out I net about $9 an hour driving after gas. It is worth it because the alternative is my wife quitting the job that carries our insurance. I am not tired of working. I am tired of the math never being done.
Shared with elected officialsQuoted in reports & materialsUsed in campaign messaging - Lupefirst name_onlyAug 8, 2026📍 Mesquite, NV
🏛️ Represented by:
The van that stopped coming
Out here the school district used to run a van for the pre-K kids from the far neighborhoods. Budget cut, van gone, and just like that four families I know dropped out of the program, because a free program you cannot get to is not free and is not a program. My niece watches two of those kids now for gas money. Everyone in this story is doing their best and the kids still lost their classroom. Somebody with a budget line item did that and will never meet them.
Shared with elected officialsQuoted in reports & materialsShared with the pressThey may contact me about it - AnonymousanonymousAug 5, 2026📍 NV
🏛️ Represented by:
We stopped at one
We always talked about two kids, maybe three. Our son is five now and he is going to be an only child, and it is not because anything changed about what we wanted. We ran the numbers when he was two, again when he was three, kept the spreadsheet like a scab we could not stop picking. Care for two under five would have been $2,700 a month. People make this decision quietly all over this state and nobody counts it anywhere. Put it in a report somewhere: the shortage is also a sibling that never happened.
Shared with elected officialsQuoted in reports & materialsUsed in campaign messaging - Angela MossnamedAug 3, 2026📍 Las Vegas, NV✉️ angela.moss@example.com
🏛️ Represented by:
I turned down the promotion
I was offered assistant manager in April. More money, salaried, and mandatory Saturdays plus closing twice a week. My daughter's center does neither. I said no in the same conversation, did not even take the night to think, because there was nothing to think about. My district manager, a woman, just nodded. She knew. Somewhere up the chain someone is writing a report about why women stall out at shift lead, and I could save them the consultant fees: it is the hours child care keeps, the end.
Shared with elected officialsPublished on web or social mediaQuoted in reports & materialsShared with the pressUsed in campaign messagingThey may contact me about it - Billfirst name_onlyJul 26, 2026📍 Fernley, NV
🏛️ Represented by:
Single dad, swing shift
I have my kids Thursday through Monday and I work swing at the plant, 2 to 10:30. Those two facts do not fit together and there is nothing in this state that makes them fit. My solution is a 16-year-old neighbor kid I pay $60 a night, and prayer. My ex and I do not agree on much but we agree on this: neither of our schedules was designed by anyone who ever had a child, and neither was anything else in this system.
Shared with elected officialsQuoted in reports & materials - Tashafirst name_onlyJul 24, 2026📍 Las Vegas, NV
🏛️ Represented by:
The good place costs a car payment more
There is a center by my work where the toddlers garden and the teachers have been there ten years and the director knows every kid's name and grandma's name. It costs $410 more a month than the place we can afford, where the turnover is so bad my son asks me in the car who his teacher will be today. Every morning I drop him off knowing the difference between what he gets and what he could get is a number on my pay stub. That feeling does not wash off.
Shared with elected officialsQuoted in reports & materialsUsed in campaign messaging - Heather KimnamedJul 23, 2026📍 Boulder City, NV✉️ heather.kim@example.com
🏛️ Represented by:
Small town, one center
Boulder City has one licensed center for infants. One. When it is full, and it is always full, your options are a commute to Henderson against dam traffic or leaving your job. When their toddler room flooded last year, fourteen families lost care overnight, and you could trace the ripples through town, the pharmacy cut hours, the school lost a aide, my dentist's hygienist just never came back. One pipe burst and you could watch the local economy limp for a month. That is how thin the whole thing is.
Shared with elected officialsQuoted in reports & materialsShared with the pressThey may contact me about it - AnonymousanonymousJul 23, 2026📍 NV
🏛️ Represented by:
I hid my pregnancy at work
I did not tell my manager I was pregnant until I physically could not hide it, because the last woman on my team who had a baby came back to fewer hours and a worse schedule and everybody knew why. I have already toured the centers. The infant room near my apartment is $1,410 a month and has nine names ahead of mine. I am due in November. I lie awake doing arithmetic that never comes out right, next to a man who does the same math and pretends he was asleep.
Shared with elected officialsQuoted in reports & materials - Omarfirst name_onlyJul 22, 2026📍 Las Vegas, NV
🏛️ Represented by:
New to the country, no village
We moved here in 2023. Back home my mother and my aunts were the child care, that is the whole system, the family. Here it is just my wife and me, and jobs that do not bend. The lists all want references and history we do not have yet. My wife had an engineering degree evaluated and ready, and she is home with our daughters instead, three years now. This country asked for her skills and then priced her out of using them.
Shared with elected officialsQuoted in reports & materialsUsed in campaign messaging - Denise WhitfieldnamedJul 21, 2026📍 North Las Vegas, NV✉️ denise.whitfield@example.com
🏛️ Represented by:
28 years in this work
I have taught pre-K for 28 years. I can watch a room of four-year-olds and tell you which ones were read to, which ones are hungry, and which ones are going to struggle in kindergarten, and I can usually do something about all three. For this I make $16.40 an hour. The young teachers I train leave within two years, for the school district if we are lucky, for a casino cage if we are not. You cannot build a system for children on the backs of women you refuse to pay. I have watched us try for three decades.
Shared with elected officialsPublished on web or social mediaQuoted in reports & materialsShared with the pressUsed in campaign messagingThey may contact me about it - Jennafirst name_onlyJul 20, 2026📍 Reno, NV
🏛️ Represented by:
The interview question I dread
Every interview ends the same way: is there anything that would affect your availability? And I smile and say no, because the true answer, I have a two-year-old and care that covers three days a week, ends interviews. I have been underemployed for two years, not for lack of skill or will, but for lack of Tuesdays and Thursdays. I do not need a program or a pamphlet. I need two more days a week that do not cost more than the job pays.
Shared with elected officialsQuoted in reports & materialsShared with the pressThey may contact me about it - AnonymousanonymousJul 16, 2026📍 NV
🏛️ Represented by:
What the application doesn't ask
I got approved for the subsidy after four months of paperwork, pay stubs, a letter from my boss, my lease, my kids' birth certificates twice because the first copies were the wrong kind of copy. Then came the real surprise: almost nobody near me takes it. The reimbursement is too low and it pays late, providers told me straight out. So I have a piece of paper that says the state will help me and a list of centers that cannot afford the state's help. Both things are true and my kid is still at home.
Shared with elected officialsQuoted in reports & materials - Rosa JimeneznamedJul 14, 2026📍 Las Vegas, NV✉️ rosa.jimenez@example.com
🏛️ Represented by:
The 4 a.m. handoff
My husband starts at the bakery at 4 a.m. I clean rooms 8 to 4. He gets home at 12:30, sleeps until the school run, and we hand the little one off in the parking lot of a gas station halfway between, most days without touching. We have been married eleven years and we see each other awake on Sundays. People call that making it work. It is two people taking turns drowning so the kids never touch the water.
Shared with elected officialsQuoted in reports & materialsShared with the pressThey may contact me about it - Unnamedfirst name_onlyrevokedJul 12, 2026
The storyteller revoked this story — please don’t use it.
- Marcusfirst name_onlyJul 11, 2026📍 Spring Valley, NV
🏛️ Represented by:
Two incomes, still underwater
My wife and I both work full time, IT help desk and county admin. We are exactly the family this is all supposedly working for. Between our two kids we pay $2,340 a month, which is more than we save for retirement, college, and emergencies combined, which is easy math because that number is zero. We are not asking for luxury. We are asking for the boring version of the deal we were promised: work hard, cover your bills, put a little away. Child care is the reason that deal is dead in our house.
Shared with elected officialsQuoted in reports & materialsUsed in campaign messaging - Alyssa TrannamedJul 8, 2026📍 Henderson, NV✉️ alyssa.tran@example.com
🏛️ Represented by:
I left nursing over a schedule
I was an ER nurse for nine years. Twelve-hour shifts, 6:45 to 7:15 if I was lucky. Every center in Henderson opens at 6:30 and closes at 6. You cannot be at handoff at 6:45 and at pickup by 6. Late fees are a dollar a minute and the third time they ask you to leave. I do telehealth intake now from my kitchen, for $11 an hour less, so that pickup exists. The hospital is short nurses. I am short a career. The schedule did that, nothing else.
Shared with elected officialsPublished on web or social mediaQuoted in reports & materialsShared with the pressUsed in campaign messagingThey may contact me about it - AnonymousanonymousJul 6, 2026📍 NV
🏛️ Represented by:
Rural means two hours of driving
We ranch outside Winnemucca. The nearest licensed infant room is 52 miles one way. For a while I did the drive, four hours a day of driving for eight hours of care. Do that in January in a ground blizzard and tell me it is a system. Now a hired hand's wife watches the baby, cash, no receipt, and we are grateful every day. Out here nobody even says the words child care crisis. It is like complaining there is no subway. There was never anything to lose.
Shared with elected officialsQuoted in reports & materials - Priyafirst name_onlyJul 3, 2026📍 Reno, NV
🏛️ Represented by:
Special needs, no spots
My son is four and autistic. He is sweet and curious and he needs an aide-level ratio to be safe. I have called 23 programs. I keep a spreadsheet. Nineteen said no outright, politely, the moment I said IEP. Two said yes and then unsaid it after his trial day. He is on two waitlists now for programs that can actually support him, both over a year long. I left a job I was good at. It was not a choice. There was no other end to that spreadsheet.
Shared with elected officialsQuoted in reports & materials - Gerald OkafornamedJul 1, 2026📍 Las Vegas, NV
🏛️ Represented by:
Grandpa is the child care system
I retired from the water district in 2022. I now provide, by my count, 47 hours a week of child care for my three grandchildren so both of my kids can keep their jobs. I love those babies more than my own life. I also had my own plans, and I am 69 with a bad hip. Every report about the child care shortage should have a chapter about grandparents, because we are the invisible system holding up the visible one, and we are getting old.
Shared with elected officialsQuoted in reports & materialsUsed in campaign messaging - Katiefirst name_onlyJun 26, 2026📍 Las Vegas, NV
🏛️ Represented by:
I do the math every single month
I am a single mom and a hotel housekeeper on the Strip. After the union rate I bring home about $3,100 a month. Infant care near us runs $1,350. Rent is $1,500. You can do that math as well as I can. My son goes to an unlicensed lady in our complex for $600 and I spend every shift trying not to think about it. It is not that I do not know better. It is that better costs $750 a month I do not have.
Shared with elected officialsQuoted in reports & materialsShared with the pressThey may contact me about it - AnonymousanonymousJun 25, 2026📍 NV
🏛️ Represented by:
Choosing between diapers and a deposit
Every center in driving distance wants first and last month up front, some want a nonrefundable application fee just to get on the list. We paid $75 apiece to get on four waitlists. That was our grocery money for a week and a half, spent on the chance that someday, somebody calls back. One of them did call back, eleven months later. We had already moved in with my in-laws by then.
Shared with elected officialsQuoted in reports & materialsUsed in campaign messaging - Consuelo ReyesnamedJun 24, 2026📍 North Las Vegas, NV✉️ consuelo.reyes@example.com
🏛️ Represented by:
A provider's side of it
I have run a licensed family child care home for 16 years. I am up at 5, kids arrive at 6:30, the last one leaves at 6. After food, insurance, licensing, and my one assistant, I cleared about $31,000 last year. Parents think I am expensive and I am going broke at the same time, and we are both right. That is the whole problem in one sentence. Three homes on my street have closed since 2023. I am 58. When my knees give out, that is twelve more families with nowhere to go.
Shared with elected officialsPublished on web or social mediaQuoted in reports & materialsShared with the pressUsed in campaign messagingThey may contact me about it - Samfirst name_onlyJun 23, 2026📍 Sparks, NV
🏛️ Represented by:
Closed with three weeks notice
Our center closed in March with three weeks notice. Not because families left, the director said enrollment was full with a waitlist. She could not hire. She was paying $14 an hour and the warehouse up the road pays $19 to start. Three weeks to find care for 60 kids in a town where every other center already has a list. My daughter cried for a month, she loved her teachers. Her favorite one drives a forklift now.
Shared with elected officialsQuoted in reports & materials - Brianna HoltnamedJun 22, 2026📍 Henderson, NV
🏛️ Represented by:
The subsidy cliff took our raise
My husband got a $1.75 an hour raise last year and we celebrated for about a week, until our child care subsidy got recalculated. We went from paying $210 a month to paying $940. The raise comes to about $280 a month. We are worse off because he is better at his job now. I called the office to ask if I was reading it right and the woman on the phone said, quietly, that a lot of families turn down raises for exactly this reason. What kind of system asks people to do that?
Shared with elected officialsQuoted in reports & materialsUsed in campaign messaging - AnonymousanonymousJun 22, 2026📍 NV
🏛️ Represented by:
Night shift, no options
I work overnights at a distribution center because the differential is the only way I can make rent. There is no licensed care in this state open at 10 p.m. None that I have ever found. My kids are 7 and 9 and they sleep at my mom's apartment five nights a week. She is 71 and tired. If anything happens to her, I honestly do not know what we do. Nobody builds child care for people who work when everyone else is asleep, and we are the people keeping everything running at night.
Shared with elected officialsQuoted in reports & materials - Marisol VeganamedJun 21, 2026📍 Las Vegas, NV✉️ marisol.vega@example.com
🏛️ Represented by:
Two years on a waitlist
I put my daughter on an infant care waitlist when I was four months pregnant. She turned two last month and we are still number 41. My mother watches her three days a week and I patch the rest together with a neighbor and my sister. I am a dental assistant. I have turned down two full-time offers because I cannot promise anyone five days of coverage. People talk about getting women back into the workforce. I never left. I am just doing two jobs and getting paid for half of one.
Shared with elected officialsPublished on web or social mediaQuoted in reports & materialsShared with the pressUsed in campaign messagingThey may contact me about it - Dawnfirst name_onlyJun 20, 2026📍 Reno, NV
🏛️ Represented by:
Care costs more than our mortgage
We pay $1,480 a month for our son and $1,290 for our daughter. Our mortgage is $2,100. Child care is the biggest line in our budget and it is not close. We are both teachers. We sat down last spring and did the math on whether one of us should quit, and the only reason we did not is that we would lose our health insurance. Every August we hold our breath waiting to hear if tuition is going up again. It always goes up.
Shared with elected officialsQuoted in reports & materialsShared with the pressThey may contact me about it