The long-lived debate on the principle of effective stress is rooted in the obscure physical significance of stresses. For the sakes of clarifying stress concepts and establishing a reasonable principle of effective stress, unsaturated soil is divided into six phases and the bearing structure of it, named generalized soil structure, is defined based on considering soil as a special structure. Then the essence of effective stress equation, named stress relation equation, is derived according to analysis of interphase interactions and independent-phase equilibrium. The stress relation equation indicates the corresponding relation between two series of stress variables used in mixed and multiphase continuum models, respectively. Furthermore, a reasonable concept of suction stress is redefined to describe interparticle connection properties. Then, a generalized stress framework is constructed by associating stress relation equation with suction stress. After demonstrating the concept of neutral stress, a generalized principle of effective stress is established and the total soil skeleton stress is searched out, which is the predominant stress controlling the strength and deformation of soil. Finally, the collapse phenomenon is analyzed and the time- and spatial-dependent stress frameworks are developed.