At American high school graduation ceremonies, it's actually the parents who are shedding tears, not the students.

Students are busy tossing their gowns and taking pictures with friends, while in the audience, parents are quietly sobbing. When I first saw this scene, I wondered why they were crying so much.

The reasons parents cry at graduations in Korea and the U.S. seem to overlap, yet they are fundamentally different.

In Korea, tears at graduation usually stem from a sense of relief that the hard times are over. After overcoming the significant challenge of the college entrance exam, there's a strong feeling that it's finally time to rest.

Moreover, in Korea, the day of the college entrance exam itself is often a more emotionally charged event than the graduation ceremony. By the time graduation rolls around, the results are already out, and the atmosphere can often be quite calm.

However, for American parents, the tears are not about grades or exams but rather the fact that their child is truly leaving home. In the U.S., it's a common cultural expectation that after graduating high school, students will move to a different area for college and become independent.

Since many students move into college dorms or even relocate to another state, graduation essentially symbolizes the last day of living together in the family home.

In fact, the culture in America strongly embraces the idea that once children become adults, it's normal for them to live separately, resulting in a much lower percentage of young adults living with their parents compared to many other countries.

This isn't just an emotional topic; it's a phenomenon studied in psychology. Known as the empty nest syndrome, it refers to the feelings of loss and identity confusion that parents experience after their children become independent, and there is quite a bit of research on this.

Interestingly, some parents even start feeling sad before their child has left home. I read in a psychology column that parents often get emotional during ordinary family dinners weeks before graduation, and I was genuinely shocked to learn this.

This is referred to in psychology as anticipatory grief. Just imagining a separation that hasn't even happened yet can affect one's feelings and behavior.

When you think about it, American parents begin preparing emotionally from the prom or graduation photo season. They refer to that season as the last year and assign meaning to each moment, which likely contributes to their emotional responses.

In contrast, in Korea, even if students go to college, it's common for them to commute from their parents' home, or even if they go far away, they typically return home during breaks. It's also common to live with parents until marriage.

Therefore, for Korean parents, high school graduation doesn't feel like a physical separation. The real moment of separation tends to be pushed to when their child gets a job or gets married.

Interestingly, this dynamic is slowly changing in the U.S. as well. Due to rising housing costs and student debt, there are increasing reports of young adults moving back in with their parents after graduating from college.

This means that after crying so much on graduation day, it may become common for children to pack their bags and return home a few years later. I find this aspect somewhat ironic.

In fact, this isn't a matter of right or wrong, but interpreting the tears at American graduations solely as a Korean-style emotional release after hardship would be a complete misunderstanding. American parents are crying over separation rather than achievement.

For Korean parents raising children in America, it seems they inevitably experience both emotions simultaneously. They have to manage the stress of high-stakes exams while also accepting the American-style independence that comes right after graduation.

Feeling proud of their child's independence while simultaneously feeling sad is a complex emotion that seems to be similar for parents in any country. However, the timing and reasons for those tears being so different is fascinating the more you learn about it.