S7 E1: Taking Family Leave: What People Wish They Knew

Podcast February 18, 2026

Transcript

Pete Wright
Welcome to Human Solutions, simplifying HR for people who love HR, from AIM HR Solutions on TruStory FM. I’m Pete Wright. Family leave has become one of the most common and most complicated benefits employers manage today. And while programs like Massachusetts Paid Family and Medical Leave were designed to support employees during some of life’s most important moments, they’ve also introduced a new layer of compliance complexity that trips up even experienced HR teams. Today we’re focusing on bonding leave, what it is, how it works under Massachusetts PFML, and why it’s so often handled differently than medical leave. This is the kind of conversation that matters because the law may be clear, but the implementation rarely is. When employers get it wrong, the consequences can be significant for the employee, the team, and the organization. We have two fantastic experts from AIM HR Solutions this week who spend their days helping employers navigate exactly these questions. Sarah Piscatelli and Mary McNalley have seen it all, the common mistakes, the edge cases, and the moments where good intentions collide with operational reality. Sarah and Mary, welcome. Happy new podcast, new webinar year. Very excited to have you both joining me today.

Mary McNalley
Hi, thank you so much. Thanks for having us.

Sarah Piscatelli
Thanks, Pete. Happy to be here.

Pete Wright
So good to see you both. We are talking about family leave, the bonding leave in particular this week. Mary, let’s start with the law. What is bonding leave under Massachusetts PFML and how does it fit into the context of family leave overall?

Mary McNalley
Sure. So bonding leave is really what it sounds like. It’s to take time off to bond with your child. And it can be for birthing parents and it’s for non-birthing parents. And it actually is for a child through birth or through adoption. And it is one of the family leave components that are part of the paid family medical leave. So there’s a family care leave and then there’s the bonding leave.

Pete Wright
That seems like a bit of an arbitrary construct there. How long are there specific dates, months, years that you can take?

Mary McNalley
Great question. So the most you can take is 12 weeks within a benefit year, which is 52 weeks. And you can take it up to one year till the child is one year.

Pete Wright
Do we need to understand the difference between bonding versus medical leave at any level of specificity? Are they substantially different things under the eyes of PFML?

Mary McNalley
Yes and no. So there’s definitely an integration there, but they can stand on their own as well. So with the bonding leave, like I said, you have that 12 weeks, but if you also had a medical claim, you could get up to 20 weeks for a medical claim. However, if you take both within the same year, so within the same 52-week period, the maximum you can get is 26 weeks. So that’s how they run concurrently, but then also their individual claims as well. Does that make sense?

Pete Wright
It does. And I would like to turn to you, Sarah, and talk a little bit. This is our Ken Burns History of Bonding Leave segment of the show. Cue the somber violins playing in the background. Can you tell us a little bit about how bonding leave has evolved over time? I know our focus is Massachusetts but this is a nationwide issue that we’re looking at here, yes?

Sarah Piscatelli
Yes, definitely. You’re seeing a lot more recognition of both parents’ roles in caregiving, right? I mean, that’s how attitudes have changed towards family life, etc. In Massachusetts, for example, we have had eight weeks of maternity leave since, unpaid. So a separate program. It’s still in effect, believe it or not. So this eight weeks unpaid was guaranteed back in 1972. That became gender neutral in 2015, which is only eleven years ago, where both parents could use the eight weeks of leave. And so bonding leave is relatively new and of course plenty of employers did have in place leaves for both parents. So employers can put that into place and many did have that sort of program, but really it’s fairly recent that bonding leave has been recognized as an important benefit for employees.

Pete Wright
Are you seeing this as a specific sort of tidal trend toward more leave, more embracing of the family orientation at childbirth across New England? Is this a kind of thing that we’re watching change in practice? I mean you yourself said it’s still in effect, believe it or not. These policies seem highly fluid. What are we seeing and what’s to come?

Sarah Piscatelli
Oh, it’s definitely trending. There are at least 13 states that have some form of paid family leave. All New England states have some form, several states have an opt-in, voluntary, but Maine is the last one that will go into effect with a paid family leave in May. So at least thirteen states and there are many other states that are sort of in the works that we’ll see that over the next few years. So certainly there’s a trend toward providing this paid family and medical leave and it usually does include this bonding piece that will be for either parent. So it certainly is trending.

Pete Wright
It just seems so much like, you know, Massachusetts so often serves as a tipping point indicator for some policies, progressive family policies in particular. For somebody brand new to this topic, what would you say is the single biggest misconception employers and employees have about bonding leave under Massachusetts PFML?

Sarah Piscatelli
I think one is really many people don’t recognize that the times are changing. One of the comments we get a lot, particularly when men are taking a bonding leave, is when I had my kids, I had one day of vacation and was back to work. Well, you know, that’s the sort of pushback you get. You hear that an awful lot, right? So times are definitely changing and finally, you know, employers, legislators are recognizing that this is an important benefit to give to employees. You know, it is meaningful. It isn’t a vacation, and they’re there to support the partner who gave birth as well as to bond with the child. And I think people are coming around.

Pete Wright
Okay, you guys, we have yet another complication to introduce, and that is continuous bonding leave versus intermittent bonding leave. I need you to walk me through an intermittent bonding leave. What does that actually look like in practice? What is it?

Sarah Piscatelli
That could be one of two ways. Under the Massachusetts law anyway, an employer can refuse to allow an employee to take an intermittent bonding leave, can say take it all at once or not at all. Okay? And intermittent can be a reduced schedule where the employee comes in two days a week, works two days a week. Or it could be something less, four hours a day. Usually with a bonding leave, you can set a schedule. Other types of leave, medical, etc., might not be. It could be a flare-up of an illness, for example, that leads to intermittent leave. But it can be managed, usually with a set schedule. Again, unlike other types of leaves, there’s usually some warning that this is coming, right? If somebody gets sick and they’re taking a medical leave or caring for a family member who has a serious health condition, you don’t always have the planning, you don’t have the time to plan, right? But for a bonding leave, yes, you should know about that at least thirty days ahead as the law requires you to give thirty days notice in Massachusetts. So there can be some cross training, et cetera. And again, the employer though can refuse to allow it to be intermittent and can require it to be continuous. I had a question just the other day where the employer wanted it to be intermittent because the employee who was going out on the bonding leave has a certain skill that they need him to be there at least once a week, and I advised them to have a conversation with them. You cannot require it, because you can’t require that they take intermittent leave. You can require that they take continuous leave. So generally though with bonding leave there will be a schedule set up, and it might run longer, right, because they’re not using it all at once, so it might run for a longer period of time, stretch out over longer than the 12 weeks which Massachusetts law gives you.

Pete Wright
Everything you’re explaining to me has hints of the complications of consistency and inconsistency to applying and approving intermittent bonding leave. Everything we talk about on this show is usually handled under the guise of you have to communicate and apply these things consistently. But you just spoke of a single employee that had a specific skill who might have gotten a unique or might have been moving toward a unique arrangement that would be inconsistent with other applications of bonding leave. Do we have to be consistent when approving or denying intermittent bonding leave? Or are we just talking about intermittent versus continuous bonding leave?

Sarah Piscatelli
Here we’re just talking about intermittent versus continuous. That’s the one thing that the employer does have some control of. And it doesn’t mean necessarily that if one person is allowed to take intermittent leave, another one will not be, you don’t have to be consistent across the board. It will be based on business needs. As long as there isn’t a discriminatory or some other unlawful reason for saying, hey, you can take it intermittently, you cannot, then you’re okay. You know, there has to be a legitimate business need though for that person to be required to take it continuously versus intermittently.

Pete Wright
Where do employers get tripped up in applying these, specifically in how these leaves are treated differently than medical leaves?

Sarah Piscatelli
But one, as I already mentioned, they don’t always recognize it as important as it is, right? They might be watching and see, oh, on Facebook, he took the family to Cape Cod during his bonding leave. Well he can do that. You know, there’s really, that isn’t the same as a medical leave where that might lead to them thinking it’s fraudulent, right? So that’s one area. And again, it is really the changing times, you know, whereas like suddenly this is a new concept because before, even just recently, women having babies would be taking a short term disability. You know, it was seen as more of a medical issue rather than bonding. But now bonding is recognized as a separate, an important reason for leave. And I think again, it’s the changing attitudes.

Pete Wright
Alright, Mary, we need to talk about coordination of leaves. We need to talk about just how PFML coordinates with FMLA and Massachusetts parental leave. What are the issues at work here?

Mary McNalley
Yeah, so I think one is understanding each law and how it works, right? So you have to have that basic knowledge. And then trying to figure out, oh okay, so what runs concurrently, what doesn’t run concurrently? Well ideally you try to get them to run as concurrently as possible because you don’t want stacking of leaves. Right? So if you get eight weeks of Massachusetts parental leave and then you get 12 weeks of PFML and then another 12 weeks of FMLA, it obviously can extend somebody’s leave out of the office. So one of the best ways to have them run concurrently is even though obviously you don’t know when a child’s gonna be born or the exact date, well I guess you do for adoption, but you know, you don’t particularly know the exact date, but what you do know is how long somebody is eligible for that leave. So for instance, you know, say if I’m adopting a child on January 1st, I know that, okay, this person would be eligible effective on January first to take twelve weeks of PFML. They could take eight weeks of Massachusetts paid family leave and FMLA, but those can all run together. What you have to keep in mind though is this 12-month allotment period. So for instance, Massachusetts paid family leave, their 12-month allotment period is done in 52 weeks. I mean, obviously that’s 12 months, but that’s how they document it. And for FMLA, you as an employer, you can pick your 12-month allotment of how you know for the 12-month period, how much can somebody take within that 12 months? So if they can take the full 12 weeks, you know, an employer can say, all right, so you’re allowed to take up to 12 weeks based on medical documentation, but it’s all based on a particular time when that twelve month clock starts. So it can be calendar year. It can be rolling forward from the date of the actual leave starts. It can be rolling back. It can be a fiscal year. So one of the first things that you know I’d like to advise clients is really think about how can you match up Massachusetts paid family leave. So we know you can’t change that, right? That’s the law. So it has to run 52 weeks from the day that the person’s disability or bonding leave starts. Actually it’s the Sunday before. So yeah, make it a little complicated. And then from there you can look at your FMLA like, oh, okay, so FMLA, well, what’s similar to that? I can do a rolling forward. I can choose that as my policy. So if I have a rolling forward twelve month allotment period for FMLA, that can line up as much as possible with Massachusetts paid family leave. And then Massachusetts parental leave, that’s just from the date of birth. So there’s no decision there. So it’s really the one you have a little bit of control with is FMLA.

Pete Wright
You speak about this with such calm and confidence, and all I hear is a dizzying amount of tracking to ensure that bonding leave, which runs sort of concurrently with FMLA, like who’s tracking what in this case? How is this actually orchestrated? And what happens if an employee exhausts their FMLA entitlement and still has PFML time? I am dizzy with options to complicate this thing. But you know, I know we often meet fate on the road we take to avoid it. How do you address this practically? You’re an HR pro, you’re coming into work and you have to deal with this for somebody for the first time.

Mary McNalley
It really is like each individual case. This is what I’ve done throughout the years, is just looking at each person and being almost like a project manager for that person because there is a lot of responsibility on the employee as far as doing the application, doing, you know, providing the healthcare provider documentation. But I think that as an HR professional, we’re there to support them and help remind them of what they need to do. And then the employer, you know, as the employer, not just this project manager piece, but then there’s also the compliance piece you have to be aware of because with PFML, obviously there are some communication requirements. You know, you have to give a notice every year, you have to give it to new hires within 30 days. But I find FMLA is really kind of probably the most onerous when it comes to administration because there are particular forms that have to be given to employees in particular time frames. And that’s where you have to be hyper-vigilant as an HR professional to know when to send those forms and whatnot.

Pete Wright
Are there any situations that you’ve run into, because as we’ve said, so much of this is we’re still adjusting to, are there situations you’ve run into where private employer leave policies intersect or interact with PFML? I guess the question is, can a company policy accidentally create a compliance issue?

Mary McNalley
Yes and no. I mean, I think in one way, one place where it could be a compliance issue is if they elect a private plan to administer their paid family medical leave and not go through the state from the Department of Family Medical Leave. They can do that, but it’s a compliance issue if they don’t get approval from that DFML. So that can happen. They have to get that approval because the state needs to see that the plan is as good as or if not better than the actual state PFML, what the law states that it should be. So that’s where there can be one compliance issue. Another compliance issue that I’ve seen is that a lot of people think, oh, well, Massachusetts paid family leave, you know, you have the job protection, you know, we hold your job, we cover you for your benefits, so I don’t have to do anything with FMLA. Well, that’s not the case because FMLA is federal and there’s never been any type of regulation or any type of notice that’s come up that says you don’t have to do FMLA now if you have a state plan. So that’s another compliance hiccup that I’ve seen.

Sarah Piscatelli
I think too, something that here in Massachusetts too, we have for the birthing parent, there’s a medical leave first, then the bonding leave. And we do see some confusion around that because there isn’t a standardized length of time for that medical leave. So when somebody goes on a maternity leave, they can look very different because a doctor might approve six weeks of recovery time from medical leave, then the bonding leave follows, right? Other doctors might do up to 14 weeks, right? And you still get your 26 weeks. It depends on, you know, so we’re all over the place on that. You know, there has been no consistency, I don’t think, on that front. And people see that sometimes as unfair, but that’s what your doctor approved.

Pete Wright
Yeah, right, right. Well, and I think Sarah, you sort of walked us right into the next set of questions that I have for you, which is, you know, speaking specifically to small and maybe medium sized employers, the impact on those employers of a leave that starts with fourteen weeks and then gives you another twenty six is non-trivial. How are these leaves affecting our smaller organizations?

Sarah Piscatelli
They definitely have an impact. We hear a lot about that. That’s one of the main complaints is what are we going to do? Again, and I mentioned earlier, this is one of the few leaves where you have some advanced notice. It isn’t caused by a sudden illness or cardiac. You have some time, right? You can do some cross-training, arrange for temp workers, but it’s still in very small companies, and mind you, almost everybody in Massachusetts can take a PFML leave, right? There’s a financial eligibility requirement, pretty low threshold. So we do have some very small employers who really are, you know, they get baffled by this. It’s a lot, like what are we gonna do? This is not fair. And again, you have to encourage them, don’t make these disparaging comments. Okay, that’s one very important thing too, by the way, in Massachusetts here. Every law that gives an employee some sort of a benefit or right, it has an anti retaliation provision. Our PFML law in Massachusetts has an extremely strict one. You know, if the employee suffers an adverse employment action, something negative within six months of taking that leave, it’s presumed to be retaliatory and the employer can only rebut that with what they call clear and convincing evidence, which is a fairly high standard, pretty high standard of proof, right? So the anti-retaliation provision is in every one of these laws. So you do, I usually do remind our callers to AIM, you have to make sure your supervisors know, don’t complain like not another kid, you know that kind of thing. You know, people say things like that and you know, you really cannot do that because that only gives them ammunition if, you know, they get back three weeks later they’re fired for poor performance, for example. We’re having to fight that presumption that it was retaliation, right? And they have this comment, you know, as proof that they didn’t want me to take this leave. You know, so you really cannot, you have to remind managers in particular, those on the front lines, don’t disparage the employee for taking the leave to which he or she is entitled, right?

Pete Wright
And don’t disparage the employee even when the employee’s not there. Don’t talk about it to co-workers, how frustrated you are. This is an inside voice, outside voice issue.

Sarah Piscatelli
Yeah.

Mary McNalley
Yeah.

Sarah Piscatelli
Yep.

Pete Wright
I’ve got more questions, you guys. I’ve got some rapid fire here. What happens if both, you know, we’re talking about small companies now, if both parents, in dare I say a mom and pop kind of company, work for the same employer? Does that change their entitlements or how their leave is managed when a couple has a child on the job?

Mary McNalley
Yeah, I can take this one, Sarah. So yes, they can take it separately under PFML. FMLA, they only get 12 weeks total together, but each parent can actually take PFML separately and like I mentioned before they have a full year to do that. Just to be clear that it’s actually the most someone can get for any type of leave under PFML is 26 weeks within that 52-week period. So that’s the most that a company for a birthing parent can say, okay, this person may be out up to 26 weeks.

Pete Wright
Got it. Okay. Very helpful. All right. Can an employer under any of these regulations require an employee to use accrued PTO before or during bonding leave?

Mary McNalley
They can. So it’s a choice that they have. They can, you know, ask, tell them that they have to do that, especially under PFML. I mean under FMLA, you actually put that in the FMLA documentation. And it has to be consistent. We were talking about consistency, right? I mean it’s not depending upon current leave, it’s a company policy. And then what comes into play with this too is another one that just came up within the last couple of years for PFML is people topping off their PFML benefits with PTO, vacation and/or sick time. And that’s also a choice that an employer can make whether they allow somebody going on leave to do that. Now, all of this being said, it just has to be documented. So it can’t all of a sudden employer say, oh, I think all of a sudden for this leave, I’m going to decide they have to use their PTO or they can’t use their PTO or we’re not going to do, you know, top off. You have to make sure that you define that in a policy. So it’s in writing.

Pete Wright
Okay. I have experience with employees leaving work to go on maternity leave and deciding during that leave, you know what, you guys, I don’t want to go back to work. I really am enjoying this. I have a situation where I cannot come back to work. What are an employer’s options under these sets of guidelines or regulations if an employee doesn’t return to work after bonding leave ends in particular? Can they recover costs? What do they do?

Sarah Piscatelli
It’s interesting because under the Massachusetts Paid Family Medical Leave, you can take a leave within 26 weeks after terminating employment. So on the way out the door, the parent can say, by the way, I won’t be back, and they still get the benefits, right? Which I think is actually, it’s more honest than I can remember, you know, years ago people would take a leave and they’d tell you the day before, oh, I’m not coming back just to be sure they get that short term disability, whatever benefits they’re getting. That’s no longer a requirement here. So somebody could really feasibly say, I’m going on leave and I won’t be back, you know, and they still get those paid benefits for the twenty-six weeks after they leave employment. But other than that though, there’s no requirement that they repay anything, nothing like that.

Pete Wright
Well, it’s fascinating and complicated and really, I mean, great for new parents. What an opportunity to have this time to just grow and become whatever the new family is going to be and be able to do it together. I think that’s really, really cool, in spite of the complexities and the potential vacation struggles. Really appreciate you both being here and talking through this. Let me just say, AIM members, please reach out to the HR helpline 800-470-6277 or helpline at AIMnet.org. We will take questions Monday through Friday from 8:30 to 5 Eastern Time. Email requests responded to within 24 hours. This is the first of our monthly lunch and learn series. We are coming back second Tuesday of every month until the end of this very year. That’s right. This is one of eleven, and we’re very excited. And remember those questions that you send in are questions that we use to formulate future episodes. So if you’ve got questions you want to hear answers, send them in. You’ll hear them this year at some point. You can also learn more at aimhrsolutions.com. Thanks everybody. Thank you, Sarah and Mary, for you being here, for your expertise, and thank you all for listening, for your time and your attention. I’m Pete Wright, we’ll see you next month, right here on Human Solutions.