> is there a workaround for earlier Python versions that does not involve patching the standard library?

You could potentially try using the new default watcher, `ThreadedChildWatcher`, by implementing it locally and setting it as the child watcher to use (instead of `SafeChildWatcher`) with `set_child_watcher()`. AFAICT, the current implementation should work well for earlier versions of Python that don't have it, we just can't include it earlier than 3.8 since it's a new feature.

See https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/4649202ea75d48e1496e99911709824ca2d3170e/Lib/asyncio/unix_events.py#L1326 for reference.