Explain the concept of a parent process in an operating system and its role in managing child processes.

In operating systems, the parent process is the process that creates one or more child processes. The parent manages the lifecycle of the child processes, can wait for their completion, and receive information about their status.

Role of the parent process:

• Creating child processes — using system calls (e.g., fork in Unix).
• Managing resources — the parent can control resource usage by child processes.
• Handling termination — the parent receives a signal about the child's termination and can free associated resources.

For example, in Unix, when a process calls fork(), a copy of the process is created — the child process. The parent can call wait() to wait for the child's completion and obtain its return code. This helps organize coordination and management of multiple processes in the system.