Let's see, Linda, there are many factors which go into providing you a decent answer here....

With many roses, by the time the stigma is really receptive for pollen, the stamen have already closed over them, releasing their own pollen, resulting in self pollination. If the rose in question is a product of "stirring the pot", say relatively closely related Hybrid Tea X Hybrid Tea, then what you're going to get is a whole lot of recessive traits magnified. That is very much the problem with many pure bred animals...German Shepherds with hip dysplasia, deaf and schizophrenic Dalmatians, etc. At least two commercially successful rose breeders I know of created breeding lines which were so homogenized, contained so much inbreeding, they had to trash them and start all over to eliminate the recessive problems. Both had created lines of roses which would flower then defoliate.

If there is wide enough diversity between the parents of the rose in question, self seedlings can give a much wider expression of what's possible in the combination. Ralph Moore used to sew self set hips of new crosses to see what was possible from the rose. He also stated many times that in all his years of rose breeding, he almost never found any evidence that self set hips were the result of anything other than self pollination.

During most of the Nineteenth Century, the raising of new rose varieties mostly resulted from sewing self set seeds. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of "new roses" raised and released which were virtually identical, and very often inferior,to the original varieties from which they were raised. It was either Ellwanger or Foster-Mellier (please forgive me if I've misspelled the names, the books are packed and unobtainable, so this is from memory)who wrote sections of their famous rose books detailing which of the then current roses were simply knock-offs of the famous and popular roses of the day and which could be dispensed with as inferior to the originals.

I frequently raise self set seed to determine what is possible from the rose. One of my best seedlings, Little Butterfly, arouse from self set hips on Escapade. It has proven a very reliable performer and extremely disease and cold resistant, two traits I couldn't have tested for where I raised the seedling. I've also raised MANY self set seed from Old Garden Roses and many moderns and have found them usually to be wastes of the space, time and effort. Very often, if the seed parent has disease or weakness issues, the self seedlings magnify the issues to the point of being compost heap fodder.

I will say that raising self set seed is an EXCELLENT way of learning how to raise rose seed. Something I urge anyone who may become interested in raising new seedling roses to do before they begin pimping pollen. It is always exciting seeing a cross you've made take and seed form from it. It is very disappointing to lose those seed because you practiced learning how to raise them on your "valuable seed". That's like buying a new camera on the way to the airport to leave for your World Tour. Nothing good can usually come from either.

By paying attention to what set seed by itself, I got a good idea of what to use for parents for pollen which didn't take easily on most things. By observing the offspring of the self set seed, I got a good feel for which roses should be used for seed parents so when I was ready to begin, I knew what to put pollen on to have better chances for desired results. It doesn't do you any good to waste the time and effort pollinating a rose which won't set seed, or whose seed often won't germinate and there are those around. Determining what works well before expending the time and energy helps stack the deck in your favor so your early efforts bear some positive fruit.

Might you have any ideas why your pollinations haven't worked out so far? You probably have feelings about what didn't work out well. Discussing them could easily help point you in the right direction for better results. I've found that often when people get down to actually planting the seed and trying to create it, they have pretty good ideas about why something didn't work as expected. Call it intuition or whatever, but I love observing it and helping focus it to succeed. Kim