A 'fork' is used when there is no dependency related to the fork-ed process; things do not all have to be done sequentially.
Example 1.
you get up
you wake up your son/daughter
you take your keys, start the car, and drive your son/daughter to school
you come back home
you now go on unix.com
*no fork in here as everything is sequential and you do not do the next step until the previous step is complete.
Example 2.
you get up
you wake your spouse up
ask (nicely) your spouse to get son/daughter up and drive to school
* here is the fork *
your spouse wakes up your son/daughter and drives to school
you now go on unix.com
*the fork here allows you to go on unix.com earlier in the day.
However, the 'fork' would serve no real purpose if you could not go on unix.com earlier.