I found a solution, which at least helps in my situation, it probably is not suitable for other situations:
I give all my green child divs a complete margin:
margin: 10px;
And for the surrounding yellow parent div i set a negative margin:
margin: -10px;
I also had to remove any explicit width or height setting for the yellow parent div, otherwise it did not work.
This way, in absolute terms, the child divs are correctly aligned, although the parent yellow div obviously is set off, which in my case is OK, because it will not be visible.