(Editor's note: Parenthood isn't for everyone and there's a growing number of people with many reasons for remaining childless by choice. This is the latest in a series of reflections by UPI writers on family life.)

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TORONTO, Nov. 19 (UPI) --While the term "helicopter mom" is increasingly used to designate hovering mothers, I am of "The Old and the Nestless" ilk -- a middle-age man and childless by choice.

The closest I've ever come to feeling "empty nest syndrome" was when my wife's 21-year-old cat died, which after a year we compensated for by getting two more from the local shelter.

That's not even close to having children, I well know. But I also knew at the age of four going into kindergarten I didn't like children. I abandoned school on my first day and walked home, disgusted by recess, which involved every kid screaming, running in circles, pushing one another over and behaving like morons.

My late mother once told me I, the youngest of her four children, was born "an old soul," and it seems she was right. I don't enjoy being around constantly needy and noisy children and I might be in jail now if I'd had to deal with a hormonally confused teenager of either gender.

Curiously, I spent several years working as a paramedic and had a particular knack for dealing with injured or sick infants and children -- saved at least a couple of them and delivered one too. I've also got a slew of nieces and nephews for whom I try to be a good uncle, but as for having my own, I opted for surgery to ensure there would be no "Mini-Me." Ever.

At age 17, I decided I wanted a vasectomy but couldn't find a doctor willing to do it.

"You're too young, you're not married and you haven't had any children," I was told. None of the doctors would hear me out that I didn't consider parenthood an experiment like trying an exotic new dish that could be sent back if it wasn't to my liking.

However, a somewhat astonished yet determined worker at Planned Parenthood in Toronto finally set me up for the vasectomy at an abortion clinic in Buffalo, N.Y., two years later.

Ouch and yippee.

It could be coincidental, but I seem to know a lot of childless-by-choice middle-age people, some married, others still single.

Among them is David, a 56-year-old writer in London with a healthy appetite for female company whom I met while covering the Yugoslav wars. Never married, he said in an e-mail he has "no regrets whatsoever" about not having children and had never planned having any in the first place.

"Any woman I meet now has either had them and doesn't want more, or is not keen on having them in the first place," he said.

Another friend, Liz, is a hospital worker in Glasgow. She never married and said in an e-mail part of the reason was a heartbreak romance that started decades ago when she was 17. After five years of courtship, the man of her dreams met another woman on a skiing vacation and married her within three months. The couple had twins nine months later.

"She got my babies. If I was ever going to have kids, it would have been with him, nobody else," Liz wrote of her decision. "I don't regret being childless, and I think it's unfair of people to view this as selfish or odd or anything else."

My friends and I appear to be part of a growing trend among people in developed countries.

In September, the U.S. birthrate for 2009 was estimated at 2.05 babies per woman, down 2.38 percent from 2008, the CIA World Factbook says, while the northeastern African country of Niger led the world with 7.75 babies per woman, the report shows.