Eddie, I do agree that Leia giving up being a Jedi because of “the birth of her son” does have somewhat anti-feminist, “Get back in the kitchen, woman” vibes to it. But I also think that “the death of her son” doesn’t quite work either.
However, I think it’s important to preserve and permit fear (both of loss and of other natural fears), because I think the message that the movies are trying to convey is that it’s how we react to our fear that’s important.
Fear of loss, fear of harm, fear of death, etc - all of these things will exist within all beings forever, BUT we can still choose to act on our fears (and the emotions they generate) in a healthy, positive way.
The problem with this is, the film never treats it as if Leia succumbed to fear when she gave up being a Jedi. If the film treated it as a mistake (“Leia gave into her fear. Now it falls to you to finish her path…”), then yeah, it would be thematically relevant; but as it stands, it actually works against the theme of “Confronting fear is the destiny of a Jedi.” No one calls her out for being afraid of one potential future (“Always in motion, the future is…”), and her sacrifice is treated as heroic instead. And then, Rey comes along and “finishes [Leia’s] journey,” and Ben dies anyway.
It’s just…kinda stupid? They want you to think that Leia sacrificed something she desperately wanted in order to protect Ben; but then Ben dies, making Leia’s actions effectively pointless. Heck, you could even argue that by not becoming a full Jedi (and somehow, tangentially, allowing Ben to live), she’s somewhat responsible for all of the destruction caused by the First Order.
It’s just weird, and sloppy, and thematically muddled.
Personally, I think if we just say “Leia sensed her son at the end of her Jedi path,” without the word “birth,” it doesn’t have such an anti-feminist connotation. It sounds less like she was forced to give up Jedi-ing because she’s a mommy now, and more like she felt, with Ben’s arrival, that it was time to move on. To me, at least.
Alternatively, perhaps we could do a slightly more intensive restructure of the line? Something like: “When her son was born, Leia decided to surrender her saber to me, saying one day, someone else would continue her journey…” That would be a lot harder to pull off seamlessly though, assuming the audio clips even exist.