INTRODUCTION

Families have historically been and remain the most significant units of human existence (Montefiore, 2022). The recognition of the families' paradoxical position is as old as the beginning of family science. Although families are relational systems potentially providing great joy, support, and security, families are also where significant pain, loss, and trauma can originate from (Lebow, 2023; Walsh, 2021). Family science has reflected this paradox. Historically, following an Hegelian dialectic of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, family science started by examining the deficits and identifying vulnerability and risk factors (thesis). The thesis was followed by a perspective shift that had scholars looking for the systems' strengths by addressing resources and protective factors (antithesis), and it has now arrived at a more mature and complex outlook, where elements from both traditions are not only acknowledged but also honored (a synthesis in working progress).

When the pandemic, a major global adverse event, hit, there was little wonder in how both these contrasting visions of family were observed. On the one side, there were stories in the news about family separation and loss (e.g., families of essential workers being split up, older family members in reclusion and dying alone), apprehension about growing conflict and violence, especially towards women and children, and concerns about survival for those who were laid-off or lost their jobs. On the other side, there were stories about families reconnecting with each other, being able to spend more time together (e.g., new fathers at home for a baby's first months) rediscovering the joys of nature walks, board games, and of the slow baking of bread from starter-dough. The fear of families succumbing to the pandemic coexisted with their glorification as a sanctuary in troubled times. Because this split was more evident in messages from mass media, family science was not immune to this polarization (Lebow, 2023). Yet, the field had already evolved greatly and since early on in the pandemic scholars have called for a more nuanced, integrated, and dynamic view of families living through unprecedented adversity (e.g., Walsh, 2020).

The will to transcend dichotomous thinking about families opened up an opportunity to revisit Donald Winnicott's concept of “the good enough mother” (Winnicott, 1953, p. 92). Being as generative as a good idea can be, this term from the 1950s seemed to be particularly useful to apply to families in the post-pandemic world. Winnicott (1953) brilliantly observed that the mother adapted to the needs and growth of the baby and that, with time, it was necessary that she adapted less and less as the baby grew increasingly able to deal with the mother's small failures and tolerate the results of frustration. This attitude can be seen as a first lesson in resilience, as the mother/caregiver provides the child with a growing ability to thrive in an imperfect world. Likewise, families navigating through the pandemic ought to be neither demonized nor glorified but understood in their capacity to provide enough security, support, and stability in the face of great uncertainty. There is, simultaneously, a lot and only so much a family system can do in a situation of adversity affecting all systemic levels (Ungar, 2021). As guest editors of this special issue, we endorse this position of complexity: families' resilience cannot be seen as result of either their merit or their fault. Instead, the family's middle position in a multisystemic context allows for hope in recognizing their potential and agency, but also for humbleness and pragmatism in observing the contextual forces they must deal with Allen and Henderson, (2022). As Lebow (2023) pointed out, families are coping the best they can in these troubled times, and an informed view of families encompasses both their challenges and resilience. We, thus, consider that “good-enough families” ought to be celebrated. This is our leitmotiv for introducing the special issue International Perspectives on Families' Challenges and Resilience during Global Adversity. While during its initial stages we envisioned several possibilities for this special issue, the end result allowed us to think of families during global adversity in a different, more complex way and form new ideas that emerged not from the individual papers but from the issue as a whole (Relvas, 2023).

The present issue gathers seven articles and four commentaries by 16 scholars and practitioners based in eight countries: Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain, United Kingdom, and United States. In this introductory article, we develop four main themes that arose from the integration of the special issue papers: global adversity, adversity in context, resilience in context, and international perspectives. The papers are used to illustrate a brief discussion around these themes. To begin, we introduce the guest editors and tell the story of how the idea for this issue came about.

Our special issue story

I, Ana Paula Relvas, am a professor, a clinical psychologist, and a systemic therapist. My base is the Faculty of Psychology, at the University of Coimbra, Portugal where I started my studies 47 years ago, when the first Psychology degrees came forth. Since then, family science and family therapy became the foundation of my work. I was privileged to be part of the pioneer movement of systemic thinking in Portugal. As the President of the Portuguese Society for Family Therapy I was welcomed in the European Family Therapy Association and later in the European and Latin-American Network of Systemic Schools (Relates), both propelling our work in international platforms. During this journey I have always advocated for a close relationship between systemic theory, research, and clinical practice. Today I enjoy watching how family studies became a well-established field and how systemic thinking endures as an inestimable source to understand and contribute to families in the present time.

I, Carla Crespo, am an associate professor and a clinical psychologist on the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Lisbon. One of the most meaningful experiences that shaped my academic life was being welcomed as a PhD student at University of Canterbury in New Zealand by Garth Fletcher and his team, followed by working as a researcher in a country so far away geographically and culturally from my own. I was very early on alert to the ways in which the contexts of science making were both so alike and also so distinct, and to the richness that came from integrating different international perspectives.

The two of us met in 2013 in Coimbra and worked together ever since in the PhD Programme in Clinical Psychology—Family Psychology and Family Interventions that Ana Paula co-founded and coordinates with three other colleagues from both our Universities. Our passion for systemic thinking and practice has led us to joint supervisions of PhD students, joint publications, memorable travels to family international meetings, and long meaningful conversations around scientific and mundane topics equally. Our experiences during the pandemic were distinct, mirroring Ceberio observation (2023) that there were as many pandemics as there were individuals on the planet.

I, Ana Paula, went back to the village where I grew up and took care of older family members. Removed geographically from my offspring, I got closer to my husband and my family of origin. The pandemic saw me renovating my family home, raising ducks, polish chickens, and peacocks, and making jams from the fruit trees that grew there. I had regular balcony visits with my mother who celebrated her 90th birthday in lockdown. A photograph album that I offered her on that special occasion reminds me of how the symbols and the rituals we were able to revisit were essential to keep a connection to loved ones.

I, Carla, gave birth to my first son 1 day before the first lockdown was imposed in Portugal. The experience of transition to parenthood was profoundly shaped by the pandemic; the well-known village I had hoped for to help me raise our child was locked at home. Although emotional support was available, much needed instrumental support faced unexpected hurdles. One of my poignant memories of this time was trying to operate a baby's sling by watching an online tutorial and making an awkward video-call to a friend. What I craved was someone to physically be present and take me, my baby, and the sling to make sure it was fit for purpose. Like Ana Paula, I pondered the power of symbols—unable to throw proper birthday parties for my son during his first 2 years, we relied on over-the-top remarkably decorated cakes which became symbols of resistance and of hope in rituals to come.

The pandemic was, undoubtedly, the catalyst for this special issue. The idea arose in early 2022 as a result of our common systemic background and also of the observations we gathered from clinical practice and from our experiences teaching at University. After the initial excitement of coming back to campus, following an ambivalent experience in a class on Zoom, we noticed, in teachers and mainly in students, a dropout in motivation, organization, and ability to get our acts together, as if a great foggy tiredness had settled in. This observation was in line with the emerging literature: a systematic review of longitudinal studies found an increase in indicators of poor mental health (e.g., anxiety, alcohol use, and sedentary behavior) among college students during the pandemic (Buizza et al., 2022). There was also, we sensed, a certain hurry in pushing back pandemic topics in research, as if it was not a hot trend anymore and society and academia needed to move on. There were new adversities requiring global attention, such as the war in Ukraine and resurfacing old ones that intensified in the aftermath of the pandemic, such as forced migrations, economic recession fears, and divisive politics around the world. As we write this piece, the walls of the universities we work in are painted with anti-war slogans and classes are digressed from their original course by students raising climate change issues. Nonetheless, together with Edgar Morin (Ginori, 2020), we consider the pandemic was a game-changer in terms adversity and an example of an historical unexpected event whose influence may be felt for a long time. As we tell the students whose clinical internships we supervise, in years to come, in their future practice, a useful question to ask their clients will be “How was the pandemic for you/your family?” As such, we considered that this was a momentous time to invite scholars to theorize and reflect upon families navigating the post-pandemic world, featuring a cumulative pile of global stressors against a background of pervasive global uncertainty. We were fortunate that our idea was welcomed by Mark Fine and Katherine Allen, the outgoing and incoming editors of the Journal of Family Theory & Review and that we received such meaningful contributions from the authors that feature in this special issue.

中文翻译：

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庆祝“足够好的家庭”：全球逆境中的家庭挑战和韧性

介绍

历史上，家庭一直是并且仍然是人类存在的最重要单位（Montefiore，  2022）。对家庭矛盾地位的认识自家庭科学诞生以来就已存在。尽管家庭是可能提供巨大欢乐、支持和安全感的关系系统，但家庭也是重大痛苦、失落和创伤的根源（Lebow，  2023；Walsh，  2021）。家庭科学反映了这一悖论。从历史上看，遵循黑格尔的正题、对立和综合辩证法，家庭科学首先检查缺陷并识别脆弱性和风险因素（论文）。该论文随后发生了视角转变，学者们通过解决资源和保护因素（对立）来寻找系统的优势，现在它已经达到了一个更加成熟和复杂的观点，其中来自两种传统的元素不仅得到承认，而且也很荣幸（工作进展综合）。

当全球重大不利事件大流行爆发时，人们如何观察这两种截然不同的家庭愿景也就不足为奇了。一方面，新闻中出现了有关家庭分离和损失的报道（例如，重要工作人员的家庭被拆散，年长的家庭成员被隔离和孤独死亡），对日益增长的冲突和暴力的担忧，特别是针对妇女和儿童的冲突和暴力，以及对下岗或失业人员生存的担忧。另一方面，也有一些故事讲述了家庭之间重新建立联系，能够有更多的时间在一起（例如，新爸爸在家照顾婴儿的头几个月），重新发现大自然散步、棋盘游戏和慢烤的乐趣。发酵面团制成的面包。人们对家庭死于流感大流行的恐惧与他们将其视为困难时期避难所的美化并存。由于这种分裂在大众媒体的信息中更为明显，家庭科学也不能幸免于这种两极分化（Lebow，  2023）。然而，这一领域已经发生了巨大的发展，自大流行初期以来，学者们就呼吁对生活在前所未有的逆境中的家庭采取更加细致、综合和动态的看法（例如，Walsh，  2020）。

超越对家庭的二元思维的意愿为重新审视唐纳德·温尼科特的“足够好的母亲”概念提供了机会（温尼科特，  1953，第92页）。作为一个好主意，这个 20 世纪 50 年代的术语似乎特别适用于大流行后世界的家庭。温尼科特（Winnicott，1953）出色地观察到，母亲适应了婴儿的需要和成长，随着时间的推移，随着婴儿越来越能够处理母亲的小失败并容忍其结果，她的适应能力会越来越弱。的挫败感。这种态度可以被视为韧性的第一课，因为母亲/照顾者为孩子提供了在不完美的世界中成长的不断增长的能力。同样，应对疫情的家庭既不应该被妖魔化，也不应该被美化，而应该被理解，因为他们有能力在面对巨大的不确定性时提供足够的安全、支持和稳定。同时，在影响所有系统层面的逆境情况下，家庭系统能做的事情有很多，但也只有这么多（Ungar，2021）。作为本期特刊的客座编辑，我们赞同这种复杂的立场：家庭的复原力不能被视为其优点或过失的结果。相反，家庭在多系统背景下的中间地位让人们有希望认识到他们的潜力和能动性，同时也让他们能够谦虚和务实地观察他们必须与艾伦和亨德森打交道的背景力量（2022 ）。正如 Lebow ( 2023 ) 指出的那样，在这些困难时期，家庭正在尽最大努力应对，对家庭的了解既包括他们的挑战，也包括他们的韧性。因此，我们认为应该庆祝“足够好的家庭”。这是我们介绍特刊《全球逆境中家庭挑战和复原力的国际视角》的主旨。虽然在最初阶段，我们设想了本特刊的几种可能性，但最终结果使我们能够以一种不同的、更复杂的方式思考全球逆境中的家庭，并形成新的想法，这些想法不是从个别论文中产生的，而是从作为一个整体的问题中产生的。整体（Relvas，  2023）。

本期收录了来自阿根廷、巴西、墨西哥、新西兰、葡萄牙、西班牙、英国和美国 8 个国家 16 名学者和从业者的 7 篇文章和 4 篇评论。在这篇介绍性文章中，我们通过整合特刊论文提出了四个主题：全球逆境、背景下的逆境、背景下的复原力和国际视角。这些论文用于说明围绕这些主题的简短讨论。首先，我们介绍一下客座编辑，并讲述本期的想法是如何产生的。

我们的特刊故事

我，Ana Paula Relvas，是一名教授、临床心理学家和系统治疗师。我的基地是葡萄牙科英布拉大学心理学系，47 年前我开始在那里学习，当时第一个心理学学位诞生了。从那时起，家庭科学和家庭治疗成为我工作的基础。我很荣幸能够成为葡萄牙系统思维先驱运动的一部分。作为葡萄牙家庭治疗协会的主席，我受到欧洲家庭治疗协会的欢迎，后来又受到欧洲和拉丁美洲系统学校网络（相关）的欢迎，这两者都推动了我们在国际平台上的工作。在这段旅程中，我一直主张系统理论、研究和临床实践之间的密切联系。今天，我很高兴看到家庭研究如何成为一个成熟的领域，以及系统思维如何作为当今时代理解家庭和为家庭做出贡献的不可估量的源泉。

我，卡拉·克雷斯波，是里斯本大学心理学系的副教授和临床心理学家。塑造我学术生活的最有意义的经历之一是作为新西兰坎特伯雷大学的博士生受到加思·弗莱彻和他的团队的欢迎，随后在一个地理和文化上与我的祖国相距甚远的国家担任研究员。我很早就注意到科学创作的背景如此相似和不同，以及整合不同的国际视角所带来的丰富性。

我们两人于 2013 年在科英布拉相识，此后一直在临床心理学——家庭心理学和家庭干预博士项目中一起工作，该项目是安娜·保拉 (Ana Paula) 与我们两所大学的其他三名同事共同创立和协调的。我们对系统思考和实践的热情使我们能够共同指导博士生、联合发表论文、参加家庭国际会议的难忘旅行，以及围绕科学和世俗话题进行长期有意义的对话。我们在大流行期间的经历是截然不同的，反映了 Ceberio 的观察（2023），即地球上有多少个人就有多少大流行。

我，安娜·保拉，回到了我长大的村庄，照顾年长的家庭成员。由于地理上远离了我的后代，我与我的丈夫和我的原生家庭更加亲近。这场流行病让我翻修了我的家，饲养鸭子、波兰鸡和孔雀，并用那里生长的果树制作果酱。我经常去阳台探访我的母亲，她在封锁期间庆祝了她的 90 岁生日。我在那个特殊场合送给她的一本相册让我想起我们能够重新审视的符号和仪式对于与亲人保持联系至关重要。

我，卡拉，在葡萄牙实施第一次封锁的前一天生下了我的第一个儿子。这场流行病深刻地影响了为人父母的过渡经历。我原本希望能帮助我抚养孩子的那个著名的村庄被锁在家里了。尽管可以获得情感支持，但急需的工具性支持却面临着意想不到的障碍。我对这段时间的深刻回忆之一是通过观看在线教程并与朋友进行尴尬的视频通话来尝试操作婴儿背带。我渴望的是有人亲自在场并带走我、我的宝宝和吊带，以确保它符合目的。像安娜·保拉一样，我思考了象征的力量——在我儿子的头两年里，我们无法为他举办适当的生日派对，我们依靠装饰华丽的蛋糕，这些蛋糕成为了抵抗和希望在未来仪式中的象征。

毫无疑问，大流行是本期特刊的催化剂。这个想法是在 2022 年初提出的，这是我们共同的系统背景以及我们从临床实践和大学教学经验中收集的观察结果的结果。在回到校园最初的兴奋之后，在 Zoom 课堂上经历了一次矛盾的经历之后，我们注意到，教师（主要是学生）的积极性、组织性和协调行动的能力都下降了，就像一片大雾一样。这一观察结果与新出现的文献相符：对纵向研究的系统回顾发现，在大流行期间，大学生心理健康状况不佳的指标（例如焦虑、饮酒和久坐行为）有所增加（Buizza）等人，  2022）。我们还感觉到，人们急于推迟研究中的流行病话题，就好像它不再是一个热门趋势，社会和学术界需要继续前进。一些新的逆境需要全球关注，例如乌克兰战争，以及新冠疫情大流行后加剧的旧逆境，例如强迫移民、经济衰退担忧和世界各地的政治分裂。当我们写这篇文章时，我们工作的大学的墙壁上画满了反战标语，学生提出气候变化问题，课程偏离了原来的课程。尽管如此，我们与埃德加·莫林（Ginori，  2020）一起认为，就逆境而言，这场大流行病是游戏规则的改变者，也是历史意外事件的一个例子，其影响可能会持续很长时间。正如我们告诉我们监督临床实习的学生，在未来的几年里，在他们未来的实践中，向他们的客户询问的一个有用的问题将是“你/你的家人对这一流行病感觉如何？”因此，我们认为现在是邀请学者们对在大流行后世界中航行的家庭进行理论和反思的重要时刻，在全球普遍不确定性的背景下，全球压力源不断累积。我们很幸运，我们的想法受到了《家庭理论与评论杂志》即将卸任和即将上任的编辑马克·法恩和凯瑟琳·艾伦的欢迎，并且我们收到了本特刊中作者的如此有意义的贡献。