Sorry to say, but no, that not a solution. I use parent and child products (variants) to inherit attributes from (grand)parent to child products, specifically (the values of) custom fields. Goal is to have one spot to manage product options (which are the same for many child products).
This has nothing to do with categories and in my application parent and childs are in the same category. (And parents are in-active also).
I'm affraid this is simply not implemented by Gavick. Data-wise, I suppose, child products are not real products in VM, which makes things complicated.
So to get rid of the problem and to continue using NSP with pleasure I introduced a plugin to the site: custom fields for all. This plugin serves my goal. One spot to control the value of a custom field that is added to many products.