Orphaned child processes

[rocco.rossi at gmail.com]

I'm using the Python processing module. I've just run into a problem
though. Actually, it's a more general problem that isn't specific to
this module, but to the handling of Unix (Linux processes) in general.
Suppose for instance that for some reason or another, after forking
several child processes, the main process terminates or gets killed
(or segfaults or whatever) and the child processes are orphaned. Is
there any way to automatically arrange things so that they auto-
terminate or, in other words, is there a way to make the child
processes terminate when the parent terminates?

Thank you.