Erm, I believe connect_cached reuses an already open connection if one exists with the same connection parameters. Seeing as how database connection handles aren't something that play nice across forks that's probably not what you want to be doing. The child process really should be calling and creating its own handle fresh.

Update: Unless you mean you're calling connect_cached after you've forked and you're not calling it in the parent, in which case UR DOIN IT RITE ALRDY and just ignore me . . .