Originally Posted by Skyvector

Here's how travel benefits work. At AA there are different boarding priorities for nonrev travel. From the top down they are:

D1
D2
D2P
D3

You, your spouse/partner, and children get 6 D1s per year and unlimited D2s

Your parents get unlimited D2Ps. Anybody can be your "parents", but you can only switch the people out once per year.

Everyone else are D3s and you get 12 of those per year. So if you put your actual parents down as parents, they would be D2P and your in laws D3s.