Is it possible to assign custom statuses to parent tasks?

I have a scenario where a team wants to use custom statuses (backlog, plan, do, etc.) and use the agile project view to manage their work. We have a parent task that is considered the overall initiative, with the detailed tasks below for steps to do. The detailed tasks below are able to be assigned the backlog, plan, do etc. statuses, however the overall parent task retains the WF default statuses of "Not Started", "In Progress", etc... I want the parent task to reflect "Backlog" (equates with new), Plan/Do/etc. (equates with in progress)... is it possible to do this? Thank you!