Which is worse? We asked people to rate their in-law parents. The results surprised us.

Hundreds of interviews provide us with a rich trove of stories and advice. They also give us a chance to see the big picture through our survey questions. We call it the Head Count; sometimes the results surprise us.

While interviewing people for our "How to Survive Your In-Laws" title, we posed this question, as well as the “father-in-law” version, to hundreds of interviewees: Rate your mother-in-law on a scale of 1-10, with 10 as the best and 1 as the absolute worst of the worst.

We assumed, from all the stories and jokes, as well as general monster-in-law lore, that the mother-in-law would score much lower than her opposite number. We were wrong.

In our survey, the mother-in-law rated 7.28; the father-in-law rated 7.29.

It’s clear, from this highly unscientific poll, that the average mother-in-law is not at all as bad as she’s usually portrayed. In fact, pushing toward a highly respectable 7.5, she scores almost an identical rating to the average father-in-law.

That’s good news for husbands and wives everywhere.