Mom's Van Is Called Uber Christine Tsvetanov uses her phone to summon an Uber car for her 13-year-old son, Guy Parkin. The progress of the car will be displayed on a map on her phone. On the first, fine Tuesday in autumn, Guy Parkin, 13, was sitting outside on the steps of the Salk School of Science on East 20th Street. He had stayed late to attend a Specialized High School Admissions Test group study session, so it was nearing 5 p.m. when a black S.U.V. pulled up, dispatched through his mother's account on the Uber app. "It's a lot more reliable than a taxi," said Guy, wearing loose pants, a gray T-shirt printed with a guitar amp, green beanie and patterned Vans, as he clambered into the car. I have to get around. I also have this Princeton Review thing that's all the way up on Madison Avenue. Uber also impresses his friends. "Yeah, it can be pretty cool to be able to do that," he said, adding plaintively: "I mean it can be tough to get around the city sometimes. In the morning, sometimes I'll take the 23rd Street crosstown bus to school and it's the slowest. I think it even won some slowpoke award. The driver, who was identified on the app as Terry and said he had picked up many children from other schools in the city, was heading toward Guy's apartment in West Chelsea. "Oh, you have to call your mom to tell her you got in the car," he said. She messaged me. The final fare: $20, charged sans swipe to a stored credit card number. For years, the limousines of a pampered few, rolling up to private schools like Dalton and more recently Avenues, have caused rolled eyes and tsks about excess and overprivileged youth. But now, thanks to the increasing popularity of Uber, a San Francisco-based company that connects passengers and drivers of luxury vehicles, more young people are getting to feel what it's like to be Suri Cruise, if only for a few minutes. Guy's mother, Christine Tsvetanov, managing director of the Whittemore House salon in the West Village, first heard of the service from a client at the salon (a "famous actress," she said) who was using the app to schedule an after-school pickup. Since then, she's seen several multitasking mothers getting their hair cut or colored send cars to pick up their children from school and bring them to the salon. It wasn't long before she was joining them. Guy is at "that lovely age that's quite difficult to manage," Ms. Tsvetanov said wryly. "There's a lot of "I want to go here and I want to go there." " Young Mr. Parkin is already traveling to Brooklyn on the subway (and has "lost a gazillion Metrocards" in the process, his mother said) or skateboarding around with friends on his own. While calling an Uber car is pricier than a taxi (on this reporter's recent trial: $33 for a 15-minute crosstown trip during peak hours, much of it sitting in traffic), a tip is included. And Ms. Tsvetanov, who said she is not in the income bracket to afford a regular private car, likes that she can control the funds. "It's under my credit card, so he's not walking around with wads of cash," she said. It's really reasonably priced for what you're getting. Plus, if she gave Guy cash, he might not spend it on transport, she said: "The only way I know he took a cab is if he gives me a receipt. Try to get a 13-year-old to give you a receipt. Uber moms argue that the service, which enables them to track the progress of cars on electronic maps displayed on their mobile phones, feels safer than cabs or public transportation. "You can see the info of the driver of the car" on the app, Ms. Tsvetanov said (meaning first name and rating, which is entered by passengers upon completion of the ride). Annik Wolf, the chief operating officer of Giftlab.com, often uses Uber to shuttle her 14-year-old twins, a boy and a girl, to and from their apartment on the Upper East Side, school and after-school activities. "It gave me that sense of security to be able to see where they were going," she said. The children "have very complicated after-school schedules" that "take them to different parts of the city," and it would be impossible for her to be in two places at once, she said. Like many in New York, the family gave up its own car, and in any case the children's father, Michael J. Wolf, founder and managing partner of a technology and strategy consulting firm, is too busy with work to help out with chauffeuring. "He's out the door with breakfast meetings and in the door after dinner meetings," Ms. Wolf said. You can't just run out mid-meeting to take your son to fencing class. Ms. Wolf heard of Uber through word of mouth and first tested it herself, sometimes to go from meeting to meeting. About a year ago, she asked her children to download the apps to their iPhones and to log in under her account. She has since used the service to pick them up not just from extracurricular activities but also social engagements like dances and bar mitzvahs. Not content to rely on tracking, she has the teens text her upon arrival, particularly if the event is at night. "I'd rather have them in a car than a random taxi or trying to navigate the subway," she said. It reduces the risk to something more manageable. An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of Kid Car's founder. It is McGibbon, not McKibbon.