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Thanks Richard!
My first reaction was YAGNI but after I read the two tickets I now understand the need for three different hooks. I suggest that we implement our own hooks like the http://linux.die.net/man/3/pthread_atfork function, especially the order of function calls:
The parent and child fork handlers shall be called in the order in which they were established by calls to pthread_atfork(). The prepare fork handlers shall be called in the opposite order.
I like to focus on three hooks + the Python API and leave the usage of the hooks to other developers.
Proposal:
* Introduce a new module called atfork (Modules/atforkmodule.c) that is build into the core.
* Move PyOS_AfterFork to Modules/atforkmodule.c.
* Add PyOS_BeforeFork() (or PyOS_PrepareFork() ?) and PyOS_AfterForkParent() 
* call the two new methods around the calls to fork() in the stdlib.
I'm not yet sure how to implement the Python API. I could either implement six methods:
 atfork.register_before_fork(callable, *args, **kwargs)
 atfork.register_after_fork_child(callable, *args, **kwargs)
 atfork.register_after_fork_parent(callable, *args, **kwargs)
 atfork.unregister_before_fork(callable)
 atfork.unregister_after_fork_child(callable)
 atfork.unregister_after_fork_parent(callable)
or two:
 atfork.register(prepare=None, parent=None, child=None, *args, **kwargs)
 atfork.unregister(prepare=None, parent=None, child=None)