diff --git a/CHANGES b/CHANGES
index 9dc33cb..71d96f8 100644
--- a/CHANGES
+++ b/CHANGES
@@ -12,6 +12,9 @@ corrections:
 	endian systems due to wrong byte order (thanks to Peter M. Galbavy for
 	bug report and patch)
 
+	Debian bug 531078: socat execs children with SIGCHLD ignored; corrected
+	to default. Thanks to Martin Dorey for reporting this bug.
+
 porting:
 	building socat on systems that predefined the CFLAGS environment to
 	contain -Wall failed (esp.RedHat). Thanks to Paul Wouters for reporting
diff --git a/VERSION b/VERSION
index 7612391..dd97b59 100644
--- a/VERSION
+++ b/VERSION
@@ -1 +1 @@
-"1.7.1.1+64bit+userlate+reneg+sockshtons"
+"1.7.1.1+64bit+userlate+reneg+sockshtons+subsigchld"
diff --git a/xio-progcall.c b/xio-progcall.c
index 281039d..a544abd 100644
--- a/xio-progcall.c
+++ b/xio-progcall.c
@@ -414,8 +414,10 @@ int _xioopen_foxec(int xioflags,	/* XIO_RDONLY etc. */
       gid_t group;
 
       if (withfork) {
-	 if (Signal(SIGCHLD, SIG_IGN) == SIG_ERR) {
-	    Warn1("signal(SIGCHLD, SIG_IGN): %s", strerror(errno));
+	 /* The child should have default handling for SIGCHLD. */
+	 /* In particular, it's not defined whether ignoring SIGCHLD is inheritable. */
+	 if (Signal(SIGCHLD, SIG_DFL) == SIG_ERR) {
+	    Warn1("signal(SIGCHLD, SIG_DFL): %s", strerror(errno));
 	 }
 
 #if HAVE_PTY