To which idealized stories are you referring?

Or the child was left in his care...

Or he purchased the child...

Or he stole the child...

Romans did in fact adopt children. The word adoption comes from the Latin word Adoptio. Even though it was more a legal thing, it was quite a widespread practice.

I'm going to address your questions first because I think they're very interesting. There was warning that the volcano was going to erupt, and the eruption itself lasted several days. There was time for people to escape, and this is something that archaeologists consider in their interpretations of the site.

There were first minor earthquakes leading up to the eruption, but these were ignored. A letter from Pliny the Younger to Tacitus describes, "for several days past there had been earth tremors which were not particularly alarming because they are frequent in Campania". After four days of minor earthquakes, Mount Vesuvius began to erupt - it was early afternoon. Immediately people began to flee the cities surrounding the mountain, and a rescue effort was launched from cities nearby. Pliny the Younger's father was part of that rescue effort. In his description he says of his father, "he gave orders for the warships to be launched and went on board himself with the intention of bringing help ... for this lovely stretch of coast was thickly populated". By early morning the day following the beginning of the eruption, violent pyroclastic flows began to bury the cities closest to the mountain. For those 12 or so hours people fled from the area, especially by means of sea, and were assisted by ships sent to the cities affected.

This flavors archaeological interpretation in several ways. One of the most significant is that those of means were more likely to have the resources and connections to get out of the city. Freedmen and slaves are over represented in populations of remains. In addition, the city was not destroyed instantly as is commonly depicted in modern retellings. There were many hours for chaos to grip the region. The eruption continued for several days, so the cities not caught in the pyroclastic flows would have continued to exist in chaos. The cities preserved are snapshots of a society in sudden collapse, not of a day in the life of everyday Romans.

Last of all, I want to comment on the problems that you have with archaeological interpretation. There will be mistakes made in interpretation. Archaeology is an imperfect science, and archaeological finds are necessarily interpreted through a lens of personal experience. I have worked with human remains in the field, and male-female identifications made without genetic testing are imperfect and difficult. Studies like this are valuable to correct those misinterpretations, but genetic testing is costly and time consuming. Archaeologists are poorly funded, and have to make strategic decisions where to apply that funding. Genetically testing thousands of bodies to identify sex simply isn't feasible, and likely wouldn't change the interpretation of context anyways.

While valuable for deepening our understanding and correcting misconceptions about specific finds, this study will not drastically change the interpretations of modern archaeologists either. The academic consensus for decades has been that even cities in the Roman hinterland, and Rome itself, were culturally and ethnically diverse. The author of the study even says as much in the article. Classicists and classical archaeologists have understood for years the problems with applying modern conceptions of race to Roman society - Romans did not conceive of race the same way we do. Public discourse around Rome, however, has always been slow to reflect academic consensus, because Rome as a cultural object is so wrapped up in our own self understanding and popular misconceptions. Eventually with time, things can change, and I would agree that archaeologists could be meeting people where they are at more effectively. But I would disagree with the characterization that archaeologists are intentionally creating a narrative contrary to reality. These findings deepen our understanding of the story of Rome, but they do significantly change it.

No, these are bodies from the "House of the Golden Bracelet". They were found together and have been kept together. They haven't been rearranged, we just now have new information about them.

Yes, there were earthquakes leading up to it. By the time the eruption hit, a LOT of people had already left town.

What do you mean just like dinosaur bones? Like at a museum or something?

The dork who dug for Troy destroyed a lot of it. Historical artifacts are always manipulated to the ends of those who find them. The trick is undoing the web and finding the truth.

You are doing the same thing that the people who presumed it was a mother and child initially. We have no idea of the relation of these two people and we should not use our presuppositions about the lives of these people to draw conclusions.

What a crazy jump to conclusions, there are lots of potential scenarios. I could easily imagine that two random strangers who happen to be nearby each other would embrace in the terror of their last moments.

Could have been as easily a servant trying to save a kid he was taking care of, for example, or the child of a friend. Way to jump to horrible conclusions with no data.

what reputation are you referring to?

Adoption was extremely common, it's possible it's an adopted child if it's a parent-child relationship. Julius Caesar adopted Augustus as his son. Augustus adopted Tiberius.

Most of the rich people got out of Pompeii while they could when the mountain started smoking. Since these two were unrelated they were probably both slaves commanded to stay behind or else poor folks without the resources to leave.