Determining if program executing in shell background?

[Kevin Perrott]

I'm VERY new to python programming so please be gentle.

I'm trying to find a function that will tell me if a pyton program is
executing in the background when launched using the:

<program name> &

shell syntax.

I'm trying to utilize the curses module to output messages to 'windows' and
the system seems to stop the program when I try to get it to run in the
background.  I'm assuming it has something to do with the curses module
requiring control of a proper stdout or something along those lines.

I wrote a small test program using the isatty() function:

#!/usr/bin/python
import sys
import os
isatty = os.isatty(sys.stdout.fileno())
if isatty == 1 :
  print("isatty")
else :
  print("isnotatty")

that I thought would do the trick but "isatty" always prints whether
launched by

<program>
or
<program> &

I must be missing something somewhere and would appreciate any help you
guys/gals could give me.

Thanks!
Kevin