Shell Background Processing in C

Hey Experts!

I am currently having issues running a background process in my shell that I have created.  Whenever I invoke the background process, by typing an '&' symbol after the commands, the program runs the process in the background, then exits my program.  Can anyone explain why this is happening?

Here is my function that handles new processes:
 

void initProcess()
{
	int status = 0;
    int pid = fork();

    if (pid == 0) {
		// child process
		if(background) {
			fclose(stdin); // close child's stdin
			fopen("/dev/null", "r"); // open a new stdin that is always empty
		}
        execvp(*commandArguments,commandArguments);
       
        // If an error occurs, print error and exit
       fprintf (stderr, "unknown command: %s\n", commandArguments[0]);
       exit(0);
       
    } else {
        // parent process, waiting on child process
        //waitpid(pid, &status, 0); //old code..
		
		if (background) {
			printf("starting background job %d\n", pid);
			childpids [nChildren] = pid;
			nChildren++;
			execvp(*commandArguments,commandArguments);
		} else { 
			waitpid(pid, &status, 0);
		} 
		
        if (status != 0) 				//process exits if error occurs
            fprintf  (stderr, "error: %s exited with status code %d\n", commandArguments[0], status);
    }
}

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I do not think that I am implementing this idea correctly.. Any help would be greatly appreciated!!! :D   ~Rob