homepage options disappear on child theme

Hi – the child theme I created seems to work fine except for one noteable exception. The option under Customize > Home Page Settings disappears. So I can’t change the number of blog posts, home featured boxes etc. The child theme is pulling content from the parent theme when I experimentally added some text in featured boxes, but other changes made in the parent don’t seem to be affecting child. Regardless, having to switch back and forth is a pain. Any idea of a fix on this? thanks!