At 57, Anderson Cooper says he’s only now beginning to grieve the family he lost decades ago. Becoming a father has brought him face-to-face with feelings he once avoided. Anderson Cooper didn’t expect to become a parent in his fifties. But at 52, he welcomed a son through surrogacy, naming him after the father he lost as a child. Two years later, he became a dad again.
Now, he is raising two young boys in an arrangement that defies convention but works by design. In the process, the writer and producer has learnt to confront parts of his personal history he once left untouched.
Anderson was twelve years old when he realized he was gay. From that moment on, he believed fatherhood was out of reach. “When I was 12 years old and knew I was gay and thought about my life, it always upset me because I thought, ‘I will never be able to have a kid,'” he would later reveal. It was a conclusion shaped by the time he grew up in, long before surrogacy and same-sex parenting became part of mainstream public life. He publicly came out decades later, in 2012, in an email to journalist Andrew Sullivan, writing, “I’ve always known I was gay from the time I was a little kid.”
Still, the idea of having children remained something he never imagined for himself. The change only came in his early fifties, when he decided to pursue fatherhood through surrogacy. On April 30, 2020, Anderson ended his CNN broadcast with personal news: he had become a father. His son, Wyatt Morgan Cooper, had been born three days earlier, on April 27. Anderson introduced his son to the public on Instagram. Alongside a picture of the infant, he wrote, “This is Wyatt Cooper. He is three days old. He is named after my father, who died when I was ten.”
Wyatt weighed 7.2 pounds at birth. His middle name, Morgan, came from Anderson’s mother’s side β a name his parents once considered for him when he was born. “I recently found a list they made 52 years ago when they were trying to think of names for me,” he continued. “I am grateful to a remarkable surrogate who carried Wyatt, and watched over him lovingly, and tenderly, and gave birth to him,” he added. He also acknowledged the surrogate’s husband and children, calling their support an “extraordinary blessing” and adding, “My family is blessed to have this family in our lives.” The post also touched on the family members Anderson wished could have shared the moment.
