Beth Wasson McDaid, 69, advocate for children

Beth Wasson McDaid, 69, who fought child abuse and crusaded for youngsters for more than 40 years, died of melanoma Wednesday, Sept. 29, at Penn Hospice at Rittenhouse.

In 1981, Mrs. McDaid became director of Philadelphia Citizens for Children and Youth, a group established three years earlier to advocate for children's needs. Under her leadership, the group created a task force on public issues and compiled a report on the status of children in Philadelphia based on 1980 census data.

After leaving what is now Public Citizens for Children and Youth in the mid-1980s, Mrs. McDaid continued to serve on the board. The current director, Shelly D. Yanoff, said: "She was vital to our organization. She was always available to advise and consent whenever we needed her." She "thought deeply" about creating systems and helping people prevent child abuse and had designed materials for new mothers, Yanoff said.

Mrs. McDaid was development consultant and then director for the Child Abuse Prevention Committee of Greater Philadelphia, now Prevent Child Abuse Pennsylvania, before becoming a consultant in the mid-1990s.

In a 1992 interview in the Philadelphia Daily News, she offered practical advice to people who see a harried parent smack or yank a child while out shopping. "Talk to the parent. Offer to play with the child, to calm the child down. If things really look out of hand, suggest the parent take his or her shopping cart and the child to a corner and offer to hold their place in line until the child and the parent calm down.

"What people shouldn't do," she said, "is be critical of the parent. Because there's no way the observer knows how much pressure the parent is under or how much the child has been misbehaving."

Mrs. McDaid, who had a master's degree in social work from Bryn Mawr College, had been an advocate for children since moving to Philadelphia in 1966.

As a consultant to the federal government in the 1980s, she aided children who arrived in Miami on the Mariel boat lift from Cuba and later helped children arriving from Haiti without parents or relatives.

As recently as a month ago she was in Washington, consulting with the federal government on child-welfare issues, said her husband, Edward McDaid.

In a tribute to Mrs. McDaid, Frank P. Cervone, director of the Support Center for Child Advocates in Philadelphia, wrote: "Beth was one of those special people who worked her whole adult life for children and families, undeterred by the slow pace of change or the seemingly endless supply of cases and conflicts. She wanted our work to be better informed, better managed, and better at change."

A native of Tonawanda, N.Y., Mrs. McDaid earned a bachelor's degree in fine arts from Alfred University.

She and her husband of 44 years maintained homes in Center City, Miami Beach, Fla., and New Hope, where she loved to landscape and garden. They traveled often to New York, San Francisco, London, and Paris. She enjoyed dining in great restaurants and discovering culinary delights in lesser-known places, he said.

In addition to her husband, Mrs. McDaid is survived by a sister, Marge Stevens.

Services were private.

Donations may be made to Public Citizens for Children and Youth, 1709 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Sixth Floor, Philadelphia 19103.