As always, Apostrophe always populates req.data.home; when req.data.page._ancestors[0] exists that is used, otherwise Apostrophe carries out a separate query. However as a performance enhancement, you may now disable this additional query by passing the home: false option to the apostrophe-pages module. Note that req.data.home is not guaranteed to exist if you do this.
As for children of the home page, for performance you may now pass home: { children: false } option to the apostrophe-pages module. This option only comes into play when using filters: { ancestors: false }.
Thanks to Michelin for their support of this work.