An orphan keeps running after its parent exits
A process is a running program, and a parent process is one that started another process. If the parent ends first—because it finishes, crashes, or is stopped—the child does not automatically disappear. It may still be doing useful work, such as completing a background task.
The operating system changes the child’s bookkeeping: it gives the orphan a new parent, usually a system process responsible for adopting such children. On many Unix-like systems, that role belongs to the system’s initial process, though a designated supervisor can sometimes adopt them instead. This keeps every process attached to a parent in the operating system’s process hierarchy.
Adoption makes a clean exit possible
When the orphan eventually exits, the new parent can collect its exit status. That step is called reaping: it clears the remaining record of the finished process from the system’s process table. Without a parent to collect that status, a completed process can linger as a zombie—a small leftover record, not a program still running.
Being adopted does not necessarily mean the orphan is stopped or restarted. It may continue until its task ends, or it may be terminated by a separate signal or system policy. The practical distinction matters for background jobs: a child can outlive the program that launched it, but its eventual cleanup still has to be handled.
