> But isn't it true for JavaScript too?

I don't think so. It's been a while since I've bled on tricky async problems in either language, but I'm pretty sure in JS it would be

  [...]
  parent_before
  parent_after
  child_before
  [...]

In JS, there are microtasks and macrotasks. setTimeout creates macrotasks. `.then` (and therefore `await`) creates microtasks.

Microtasks get executed BEFORE macrotasks, but they still get executed AFTER the current call stack is completed.

From OP (and better illustrated by GP's example) Python's surprise is that it's just putting the awaited coroutine into the current call stack. So `await` doesn't guarantee anything is going into a task queue (micro or macro) in python.