Stair protection railing - stair safety for children

We solved it completely unorthodox and just got the stair gate as a gift. :D Babies / children go through different phases, and for the first few months you don’t need to stress at all, since they aren’t mobile yet. When crawling starts, you quickly reach the point where you either a) have to supervise them closely, or b) keep them within a "safe space," like a larger playpen or something similar. I didn’t like the idea of a playpen at all until we had a child. We then got one fairly quickly because the child didn’t find it so "prison-like" as we adults did – ours always loved it, happily played inside, and often fell asleep there. We never missed the classic stair gate, since there were so many things in the hallway area that weren’t childproof that we either stayed close to the child or the child had no access to the hallway. When he got older, we eventually installed a pressure-mounted gate on his bedroom door. We secured the room so he could stay and play there safely alone, and the gate in the door ensured he didn’t get to the stairs or other rooms that were not child-friendly. But that’s a rather special case, since our son played quite autonomously early on and was generally never very clingy. From what I hear from friends, that is not necessarily typical. But just as a food for thought, it doesn’t have to fit your plans of course.

And why exactly can't it be done at the bottom end like in the picture, where it rests on the lower step

I think it's possible, but the fear was that someone might crawl underneath the lowest step. At least, that's how I understood it.

That explains it. I also didn’t understand the problem for a long time. If there are bearing surfaces below step 2, then there are such clamp curtain rods that you could screw in between.