I am learning Swedish and saw this in a newspaper: Har du en svärmor eller en svårmor?

Pretty good! It means: do you have a mother-in-law (svärmor) or a svårmor (difficult mother)? Svårmor is just a made up word and it is a play on the word svärmor.

I imagine the article deals with relationships with mothers-in-law.

It means this:

Do you have a mother-in-law or a difficult mother?

And as the swedish word for difficult is "svår" and for mother-in-law is "svärmor", they just changed the "svär-" to "svår-". So, as the other one said, the word "svårmor" is not really a word but they're just playing around with the word "svärmor"´, like if your "svärmor" is hard to deal with it might be a "svårmor" in stead ;) Hop this helped!

Dear Lex

Just wondering where (and what methods) you use to learn Swedish. Great that you read newspapers, too. That helps expand your knowledge and understanding.

PS, I hope you know about (and use) Lexin -- See link below. If you use it, you need to use your imagination in finding compound words like svårmor