A system and method is provided for using a kernel exit routine, performed when a parent process exits, to efficiently remove zombie child processes. The kernel exit routine also re-parents active child processes to a standard system process, such as the init process. When the kernel exit routine re-parents the active child process to the init process, the child process is flagged indicating that the child's original parent process has already exited. A kernel routine, such as the swapper process, periodically cleans up flagged processes that have exited. In this manner, although active child processes are still re-parented to init, the init process is no longer burdened with the task of waiting on such processes when they exit.