My name is Page Checketts, I am the Founder and Executive Director of UC3. This is a picture of me when I was 11 at my sixth grade graduation.
It was a special day because my Mom let me wear high heels for the first time (even though they hurt my feet and I took them off for most of the ceremony) and because the Kiwanis Club gave me the “Hope of America” award. That award really made an impact in my life. I remember feeling like I was special and that I had something to contribute to the world and I started looking for ways I could do that.
I explored what I was good at, what my interests were. I was attracted to the sciences and by the end of high school, I had taken as many sciences classes as I could. When it came time to deciding what to pursue in college, I felt like I had only one choice if I wanted to be a mother as well as continue to use my education and contribute outside of my home-that was a career in Nursing. I moved forward with vigor, got my Bachelors of Science in Nursing and enjoyed 10 years of my career.
But after 10 years, working the night shift and taking care of small children in the day, I was exhausted and I quit. We lived in Silicon Valley at the time and there weren’t child care resources readily available or affordable for me to make a different choice. When it came time for me to return to the workforce, my license had expired, and because I primarily worked in liver and kidney transplants and oncology, my education and experience was in many ways outdated.
Experiences like mine are very common. People, particularly women, want to stay in the workforce, or return to it, but don’t have the support they need to do so.
20 years later, I am watching my children face the same challenges that I faced. Not much has changed over the last twenty years and in some ways they are worse. Utah is last in the nation for the accessibility of child care services and this trend has been on the decrease since 2005. Even if you can find child care, it is often unregulated or low quality. Beyond that, an average income family in Utah pays 23% of their income to child care-similar to college tuition or a mortgage.
I want every Utahn who wants to work and contribute their gifts and talents to our community to be able to do so without compromising the well-being of their family. I want to see every person utilized in their maximum capacity. I don’t think that having children should mean that you should be locked out of the economy.
