Mamamia Team Monday 21 May 2012 3:27pm

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And I deserve everything I want.

Female Entitlement Mentality. It’s “always getting what you want, when you want it, even in defiance of reality and other people’s wishes,” according to Miranda Devine, who wrote about FEM in an opinion piece for the Sunday Telegraph over the weekend.

Whether it’s career or family related, Miranda suggests there’s an increasing number of women who believe they live in the age of entitlement and have a “deluded self-belief and inflated sense of importance”.

Her article is based on a survey which found there were health risks for women who put off having children until after the age of 35. What was interesting about the survey, she wrote, was the reaction to the results.

Older mothers were angry at the suggestion they posed a “greater potential burden” on the health system, despite the fact that “no one was telling older women not to have babies or saying they won’t have a perfect delivery. The study simply reported the unavoidable fact that fertility declines with age, and the risk of some complications doubles. Knowing the truth should help women inform their life decisions, and avoid heartache down the track. But the irate reaction suggests some would rather bury their heads in the sand. The hostility was symptomatic of a female entitlement mentality (FEM).”

Expanding on this idea of FEM, Miranda wrote:

Miranda Devine

Increasingly in our narcissistic age we see this deluded self-belief and inflated sense of importance, from baby boomers to 13-year-old princesses.

At its extreme, it manifests in the stars of reality shows such as The Real Housewives of Orange County, women whose lives are an epic monument to selfishness.

FEM is the end product of a culture that places self-esteem and empowerment above fairness and common sense. For three generations, women have been told growing up that they are can have it all, do anything, and have unlimited freedom of choice.

This was terrific for women to break free of oppression and achieve equality. But along the way we forgot that some restrictions on freedom must exist, if you are not to trample on the rights of other people and if you accept certain biological realities.

Now, an inflated sense of entitlement means you lash out and blame others when you don’t get everything you believe you deserve.

Some of Miranda’s examples of the Female Entitlement Mentality include:

- The 18-year-old girl who is suing her former private school after she failed to get into the law school of her choice. She claims the school did not support her. The school claims she didn’t finish all her work.

- People who opt for home birth over hospital births. “Their entitlement to a personally fulfilling experience trumps the right of their unborn child to the safest possible birth,” she writes.

- The dating scene. Are women being too picky and coming across as arrogant?

But it’s not just women who are guilty of growing up believing they can “have it all”. As children, we’re lead to believe we can do anything; that we can do anything and be anything we set our mind to.

But to what extent is that true? Where’s the line between thinking you deserve something and actually being able to achieve it?

Your thoughts?