Anderson Cooper Recalls Mom Gloria Vanderbilt’s ‘Bats–t Crazy’ Idea to Carry His Child

Anderson Cooper’s mom, Gloria Vanderbilt, was so on board for her son’s journey to fatherhood — she even offered to be his surrogate! The CNN anchor revealed his late mother’s “bats–t crazy” idea to help him start a family of his own.

“This is like eight years before I decided to have a child,” Anderson, 56, said during an episode of “The Howard Stern Show” on Tuesday, September 26. “But my mom really wanted me to have a kid, and she called me up one time and she was like, ‘Honey, there’s something I really need to talk to you about.’”

He explained that his mother visited a gynecologist and was told she could “still bear a child” at the age of 85. At the time, Anderson told his mom that the news was “amazing” but he wasn’t sold on the idea of having her carry his child.

“And then I’m immediately thinking, ‘How do I stop my mom from bearing a child?’ Which is a thought I’m sure we’ve all had,” he quipped.

In the end, it seemed like the whole thing was a bit of a misunderstanding.

“And finally, she said, ‘I’m not thinking of bearing a child myself,’” Anderson recalled. “She said, ‘You know you can get an egg anywhere nowadays?’”

Gloria later clarified her idea of helping her son find the best method of family planning.

“She said, ‘What I was thinking is you get an egg and fertilize it with your sperm and I will carry your child.’”

This wasn’t the first time that the broadcaster spoke out on his mother’s desire to become a grandmother.

“I get a thing in the mail that my mom has sent me … and it’s a newspaper clipping and it’s a photograph, the headline is, ‘Grandmother Bears Child for Son,’ and it’s some woman, I think in Italy, who was like 65 or something or 70,” he said during of September 2021 appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. “And it’s a photo of her in the labor room in the stirrups.”

Anderson became a dad for the first time in April 2020 when his eldest child, Wyatt, was born via surrogate. He expanded his family for the second time in February 2022 with the arrival of his youngest son, Sebastian. The newscaster coparents his children with ex-boyfriend Benjamin Maisani.

“It’s awesome,” Anderson gushed of his coparenting relationship to People in September 2021. “It’s probably an unusual setup, but I knew he would be a great dad, and he is. We’re exes, but we’re family to each other, and we love each other as family and as coparents.”