The beautiful parents

In French we call the parents in laws the "beautiful parents" (les beaux parents). What strikes me is that even the unmarried couple call their partner's parents "my beautiful parents". For example, I was asking what everyone else would be doing during Christmas, those single classmates with girlfriend boyfriend replied that they would spend a day with their parents, another day with their "beautiful parents".

When they said that I always thought that they are married. The family structure here is so untraditional these days. You can have couple who are together forever with children but still not married. It still sound weird to me when I see kids call the couple "dad" and "mum", but when the "dad" introduces the "mum" he would say this is my "girlfriend". These days you can even hear the kid in the class asking the other kid:"What? You only have four grandparents? I have EIGHT!" Yes it is totally possible to have eight grandparents. I will let you figure out yourself.