Television celebrity and host Andy Cohen recently appeared on Amanda Hirsch’s Dear Media podcast Not Skinny But Not Fat to discuss his youngest child’s birth via gestational surrogacy.
Cohen, an unmarried man in his fifties, decided nearly five years ago that he wanted to be a father. He had his first child, Ben, who is now 4 years old, in California using a gestational surrogate. At the time, this form of surrogacy was illegal in his home state of New York.
“[Gestational] surrogacy was illegal in the state of New York until [2020] and I helped get that law passed,” Cohen said during the interview. He thanked New York’s former Governor, Andrew Cuomo, adding that “he really made it happen.”
Cohen’s daughter Lucy, who was born in New York also via gestational surrogate, is just over a year old now.
“I wanted to have the baby in New York, or I wanted my surrogate to have the baby in New York,” Cohen told the interviewer. “And so Lucy was one of the first surrogate babies born here.”
Cohen monetized his new parental role by writing The Daddy Diaries: The Year I Grew Up, a book detailing the “behind the scenes drama” of his “so-called glamorous life in Manhattan” and his limited fathering experience.
During his interview, he also told Hirsch that he’s “the only gay parent at Ben’s nursery school and the only single parent.” Cohen does not appear to be in any relationship at all in fact, his most recent romantic involvement ended just before he decided to become a single father of two. He also claimed that his son has recently been telling him that he “want[s] another daddy.”
“And it’s so cool to me that he knows that it would be a daddy,” he added. “My son has an excellent gaydar, what can I say?”
Cohen explained in a separate interview that after the arrival of his second child, more difficulties arose because he was parenting solo. He described his experience bringing his children to the park where they were surrounded by other parents, “I just felt the experience got a little lonelier for me. I started to feel more vulnerable.”
He explained, “I looked around, and I’m the only single parent there. I’m the only gay dad. I just felt like I was on an island, and I went back to my house, and I cried.”
Cohen’s experience, though heartbreaking for everyone involved, is the result of a culture that glorifies parenthood on demand. Americans no longer embrace the natural rights of children to grow up with both their biological parents.
How Gestational Surrogacy Differs from Traditional Surrogacy
Gestational surrogacy refers to a process in which one woman “donates” her eggs for profit, and another is paid to implant the fertilized embryo using a medical procedure called IVF (in vitro fertilization). This woman carries the baby, to whom she is not biologically related, for the buyer and would-be legal parent. This is the most common form of surrogacy in the United States.
Traditional surrogacy occurs when the biological mother is also the gestational carrier for the baby, but gives up all legal parental rights upon birth.
Surrogacy is a widely accepted method of growing a family for single adults and same-sex couples, but as political commentator Allie Beth Stuckey frequently says, whenever society moves from what is natural to what is possible, there should be some medical ethics questions raised.
Cohen explained how being a single father to two children made him aware of his loneliness, a feeling that most would consider natural for a man who chose to embark on the journey of parenthood alone, in a uniquely unnatural way. Does that make his decision wrong?
‘Such a Transactional Experience’ Khloe Kardashian Shares Her Experience Using a Surrogate
Khloe Kardashian recently spoke publicly about her experience using a gestational surrogate to carry her youngest child. Her ex-fiance Tristian Thompson is the biological father, and she is the biological mother, but through the process of IVF, she had the fertilized embryo transferred to another woman to carry to term.
During one episode of “The Kardashians,” Khloe Kardashian said that she was jealous of her sister Kim, who used a surrogate to carry her child and seemingly had no trouble connecting with her baby. On the other hand, Khloe explained, “I felt really guilty that this woman just had my baby and then I take the baby and I go into another room.”
Kim agreed that a baby has a unique connection with the woman who carries him but didn’t acknowledge that the gestational carrier should also be the biological mother in an ideal situation for the child.
“It’s such a transactional experience — because it’s not about him,” Khloe said. “I wish someone was honest about surrogacy.”
Them Before Us: Children’s Rights Outweigh Adults’ Desire to Parent
Last year, I sat down with Katy Faust the founder of Them Before Us, an organization dedicated to placing children’s rights at the forefront of cultural and societal topics. We discussed the dark details surrounding surrogacy and IVF that are rarely mentioned.
Faust argued that children not only have a natural right to life, but they also have a right to both of their biological parents. She emphasized that mothers and fathers are not interchangeable, and growing up with both will maximize child development.
She told me that she asks one simple question when determining whether or not a situation has prioritized the child’s rights: Is the parent doing the hard thing for the child’s wellbeing, or is the child being asked to do the hard thing for the parent? If the child is being forced to endure the hardship, unnecessarily, for the happiness of the parent, she doesn’t approve of the situation.
Surrogacy always places a burden on the child, it always removes at least one, but at times both, biological parents from the child’s life. This is a controversial topic, but to move forward and make decisions that prioritize the child, these are the difficult conversations that need to be had.
This piece first appeared on TPUSA.
