Ann-Elizabeth Young can hear her five-month-old daughter babbling in the next room as she works remotely for a Boston-area shelter. But it won’t be that way for long. At the end of the month, Young will be taking a second maternity leave — and focusing full-time on her daughter.
Young — and other Massachusetts workers who had children in 2020 — have won something of a parental leave lottery.
The state is rolling out a new lawthat guarantees most employees in Massachusetts paid family and medical leave. Starting Jan. 1, new parents became eligible for three months of paid leave any time within the first year of their child's life. Going forward, the state leave — called "bonding leave" — will typically run at the same time as the three-month leave guaranteed to new parents by the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA).
But for those like Young who became parents in 2020 and took leave then, the new state law lets them take leave again, as long as they take it before their child turns one. And though the three-month leave guaranteed by FMLA is unpaid, the state will pay new parents a portion of their income. The benefit is funded through a tax on employers and employees.
Young was shocked, and delighted, to learn that she would be able to take a total of six months of leave to be with her daughter.
"This is huge," Young said. "This is more time than I'd ever dreamed that I would have. And I am so grateful for that."
But Young said she learned about this second maternity leave by word of mouth, and if an aquaintance hadn't told her husband about it, she may never have known that she is eligible. And she had to tell her employer, who was also shocked.
The state has not actively advertised the launch of the online application or done significant outreach explaining to new parents that they may be eligible for more leave. In several social media groups, Massachusetts parents have lamented the lack of publicity around the law's rollout and tried to help one another understand its intricacies. Parents in these groups say in many cases, pediatricians and OBGYNs have also not been aware of the new benefits. The Massachusetts Department of Family and Medical Leave declined an interview request to explain why it hasn't done more to spread the word.
“I think we could collectively do more to get the word out,” said Rep. Ken Gordon (D - 21st Middlesex), who sponsored the legislation.
From the early stages of drafting the law, he said, legislators were concerned people would not know they had access to paid leave.
“So, written right into the law is an obligation of the employers to post notices that this benefit is available,” he said.
However, Gordon said the parents eligible for the double maternity leave is not the population he was focused on when pushing to make sure this law became a reality.
“The population that I really had in mind were those that couldn't afford to take the unpaid leave,” he said.
He wanted to ensure those who had kids in 2020 but hadn’t been able to afford to take the federal unpaid leave could now have leave time to bond with their children.
At a virtual town hall last month, the state’s Department of Family and Medical Leave confirmed the one-off double maternity leave opportunity. Department representatives pointed out that in the future, under the new law, birth mothers are eligible for two separate leaves anyways.
“If you're the birth parent, you can apply for both medical and bonding leave. In those situations, we ask that you apply for a medical leave first," Greg Norfleet, the deputy director of operations at the Department of Family and Medical Leave, said at the virtual town hall.
If a doctor certifies that a pregnant woman has a “serious medical condition,” she can take up to 14 weeks of medical leave while pregnant or after delivery. In addition, any time in the first year of their child’s life, she can take 12 weeks of bonding leave. If a woman takes both medical and bonding leave, she could have up to 26 weeks — or half a year — of paid leave.
If the law had been in effect in 2020, Young likely would have qualified to take paid medical leave to recover from her emergency c-section before taking paid bonding leave.
Christopher Geehern, the executive vice president of Associated Industries of Massachusetts, a group representing more than 3,000 employers, said this can be hard for companies.
“I think the biggest challenge for employers with paid family and medical leave really hasn't been the cost. It's been the logistics of replacing people who are on leave,” Geehern said.
So far, he said, they haven’t seen too many cases of people taking leave twice, but reconfiguring a plant or office or restaurant to accommodate it is not easy.
“I don't think it's been a showstopper for any company, but [paid leave] certainly has added to their kind of administrative burdens,” he said.
Young said that not knowing about the benefit earlier means it's been a scramble to get everything at work organized before her leave starts at the end of the month. But, she said, her employer has been accommodating and supportive, which she knows might not be the case for everyone.
“I can see some employers not responding to that particularly well," Young said, adding that putting the burden on employees to educate their employers about the law "puts a lot of undue stress on families.”
